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is Matter; 



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The Substance of the Soul. 



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WILLIAM HEMSTREET. 



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New York : 

FOWLER & WELLS COMPANY, 

775 Broadway, 

PUBLISHERS 



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COFTBIGHT. 1891, BY 

7 — z: : in- . 
Nkw York. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

MENTAL DYNAMICS. 

The dynam power of will — Extraneous results of will- 
power — The influence of mind not limited to bodily expres- 
sion — Character is infectious, not by moral imitation but 
by emanation and direct germination — The power of com- 
mand is a material power — R. C. Kirk, Lord Bacon, George 
Sands, Napoleon, Emerson — Mind has a physical power over 
other minds like the finer methods of molecular vibration or 
atomic energy — Passive and positive people — mind dominat- 
ing over matter but of matter — Positive greatness and pas- 
sive greatness — Political and military leaders — Sympathy and 
instinct are material contact — Transfusion of vital and ner- 
vous force — The force of mind is related to all other material 
forces and is not abstract sentience 1 

CHAPTER n. 

THINKING MATTER. 

The conscious ego differentiated into mind and soul — The soul 
a corporeity, the mind is the consciousness of that corporeity— 



IV 

The s of particles of substance -equality 

rntience Kty of e: _ — " 

considered — Object: 7 seem to be — 

Hatter is real and obje<: he mind, connate with mind, 

and sentience ad ation does, altl 

— e am never understand e. sry — Mind and n: 

are one amalgum — Zackoke — God in the atom — Soul and God 
are not me: il are physical fa 

immatt: bance — 7_e:r := no dead ma. 

A fine electric f bitat 

of cons: —The wonderful physical f sex of foc-ali&ng 

I — : F fesmr Ladd — Dr. Hammond — Matter not a 
ernal comp . b f spirit — Morals and 
-.ted — The pe : matter and 

-imortality — Electric- 
ndlife — Defini:. — nsd . matter — TyndalL, 

Spinoza, Scheming, P. J. Cook — The f atoms — 

Atoms are life principle, ■ ire sexed organism- 



HAPTEE III. 

THE COSMIC 3UBSTAKCK a>T> MDvD. 

The nature and qu inee — The primordial 

cosmic gas of infinite tenu: 

the condensation of which are the more physical forms — AH 
matter is from one element — Faraday. -. Toumant — 

:ondem 
rulr -elf into elen 

and forms — rock and the ar ■ 

The a centralization of 1 f atoms 

same as a physical organism is — Acretion and dis: 
souls — Magnetic stream isindi^ uncertainity 

diffusion of the ego— The atom a living being — Each 
is a mental germ in the creative mind — God in PL; 



CONTENTS. V 

matter — Dr. Meredith, Dr. Scudder — Attraction is radiant 
matter — Mental continuity is explainable only by atomic 
cohesion — Heredity — Soul defined . . . .72 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE ELECTRIC SOUL. 

The nerve fluid and electricity are probably the mental body — 
Electricity is matter and probably the primordial element 
and the body of God — The Pentecostal Flame — God is chem 
ical law — Social cohesion is magnetism — W. E. Gladstone — 
God is nature and evolutional — The physical power of mind 
— It probably stamps inorganic matter into organization — 
The commencement of the individual at parental coition, not 
in spermatozoids — Spontaneous generation from Spirit force 
— Formative energy in the ether all the time existing — No life 
without pre-existing life, but organism can be made without 
pre-existing organisms — "We cannot locate a beginning except 
as to species — Bastian, Tyndall. ..... 94 

CHAPTER V. 

SOCIAL FORCES. 

Hypnotism, its personal and social power — Charcot, Bernheim, 
Donato — Hypnotism against individuality — God is the energy 
of matter — H. "W. JBeecher — The hypnotic philosophy com- 
prised nearly all of social law and conduct — The fluidic and 
suggestive theories of hypnotism — Mental magnetism . 119 

CHAPTER VI. 

MAGNETIC LIFE. 

Further phenomena of spirit matter — Reported facts of our 
time — The physical theory of prayer and faith-cure — Death- 



VI CONTENTS. 

bed visions— Influence of departed spirits— The intuition of 
women — Electricity in the blood — Moral influences in the 
air — Magnetism, nerve-fluid and vitality — Magnetic propul- 
sion of blood circulation — Electricity in the voice — Electric- 
ity is a physical fluid. Relation of magnetism and electricity 
to soul 143 

CHAPTEE VII. 

SPIRITUALITY. 

The persistency of psycho-matter — Spiritualism — Dr. Abbott — 
Spiritual influence depends upon susceptibility — Sir Walter 
Scott — Difference of specific gravity in organized beings — 
The corporeal soul — A chemical soul, President Bashford, Dr. 
Taylor, Goethe — Dr. Talmage and Dr. EUiot Coues on the 
nearness of spirits to us — Authentic phenomena. . 177 

CHAPTER VUX 

GOD WITH US. 

" God surrounds me like an atmosphere," Dr. Meredith — A de- 
monstration of theology from the foregoing theories — The 
presistency of hope united with the persistency of matter as- 
sures us of immortality — The social and moral benefits of 
material spiritualism — Dr. Tlwmas Chalmers — Bible spiritual- 
ism — Death a progress in life, Robert Browning — The soul 
sustaining power that is in the atomicity of the Holy Ghost 
— Evolution into spiritualism — The dispersion of soul particles 
by loss of moral virility — Righteousness is the health of the 
soul— The spiritual body— The resurrection a scientific 
fact 207 



INITIAL. 

The unseen physical force of a common horse- 
shoe magnet will pass through a thick, broad 
plate of glass, held at a distance from the glass, 
and hold the armature on the other side of 
tne glass with no apparent diminution of force. 
In the same way electricity from a wire will 
penetrate a quarter-inch plate of glass and pro- 
duce a light on the other side. A person, quietly 
and without friction, holding in the hands an iron 
bar, thoroughly and permanently magnetizes 
it, so the magnetism can be inducted from that 
bar to other bars. All people have experienced that 
the approach of another has been heralded by 
some occult and objective influence. 



Vlll INITIAL. 

From the above simple, natural and related 
facts may be evolved new systems of psychology 
and of social and religious philosophy. 

All mental action is atomic or material action. 
There can be no mind without matter, both in 
the body and after the Jbody. Mind is of matter. 

The intent of this essay is to popularize, by 
scientific methods, by gradual and legitimate 
analogies, and from facts we all agree about, 
the theory that the soul is a material, self-con- 
tinuing substance, not an idea-abstraction ; that 
it operates beyond the body, and is, like all 
other ultimate substances, immortal and the 
subject of material laws. On the materiality of 
electricity stands or falls the immortality of the 
soul. Within two years this will be universally 
accepted. 

The corroborative quotations herein cited 
were, in every instance, discovered after the 
context was penned by the author, who has, how- 
ever, italicized portions. Many separated people 
concurring is some assurance that their common 



INITIAL. IX 

opinion is correct. In the middle of the ocean, 
one morning, under a narrow dome of leaden 
mist, five officers of a ship were peering with 
sextants in different directions for the sun. 
Xone knew he saw it for certain, but they agreed 
upon an average of their conjectures, and when, 
in the afternoon, the canopy of vapor unveiled 
the sun, they found they had reckoned right. 
So it is in speculative philosophy, it often does 
good, never does harm. 

Brute- men are tenacious of the dogma that 
what they cannot see is not. They are the 
laggards in the world's progress. They swear 
they will not believe anything they cannot 
know, and yet believe in their own children. 
Resistance to new propositions is a constitutional 
disease, like procrastination, or like a turgid 
humor in the blood. Fine analogies are intuitive 
parallaxes that point us onward. We go whither 
they direct, and nine times out of ten we find 
truth. 

Agnostics, reading the manuscript of this 



X INITIAL. 

work, have confessed an increased hope in 
Immortality. 

In the New York desert of lifeless pavements, 
dirty, thundering and grinding, one tiny green 
oat-sprout from a curbstone joint showed the 
living God was there. And along those streets 
rushed a hundred thousand harsh, unspiritual 
people, fighting hard and game for livelihood. 
What time had that mass for moral philosophy 1 
What for virtue cared, and how can they be 
held responsible, some of those still beautiful 
daughters of Eve, hurrying, poorly clad, sand- 
wich and dime novel in hand, to their shops, fac- 
tories and task-master devils I What for 
honesty cared those men and boys ? Those 
things might do to put into books. A new 
garment, a square meal, a variety show, a horse- 
race were to them the first concrete blessings 
attainable, and which they placed against any 
stray word of Inspiration they may ever have 
heard and scoffed at as baseless conjecture. Can 
some sound secular reasoning upon material 



INITIAL. XI 

psychism be dropped like seed into the hard, 
materialistic avenues of their hearts, to become 
sprouting germs of an immortal Hope, or a 
fountain of refreshment in their too frequent 
hours of collapse ? 

If the following treatment is crude and incom- 
plete, let the more equipped and practiced 
thinker build upon it and write something 
better. 

William Hemstreet. 

Brooklyn, 1332 Bergen St., 
April 1, 1891. 



MIND IS MATTER. 



CHAPTER L 

MENTAL DYNAMICS. 

The dynamic power of will — Extraneous results of will- 
power — The influence of mind not limited to bodily expres- 
sion — Character is infectious, not by moral imitation but 
by emanation and direct germination — The power of com- 
mand is a material power — 11. 0. Kirk, Lord Bacon, George 
Sands, Napoleon, Emerson — Mind has a physical power over 
other minds like the finer methods of molecular vibration or 
atomic energy — Passive and positive people — mind dominat- 
ing over matter but of matter — Positive greatness and pas- 
sive greatness — Political and military leaders — Sympathy and 
instinct are material contact — Transfusion of vital and ner- 
vous force — The force of mind is related to all other material 
forces and is not abstract sentience. 

A mind has a direct, dynamic, material power 
upon other minds, inducting its conditions, 
character, and will ; it suffuses and impresses 
them by both voluntary and involuntary waves, 
without speech, sign, or any bodily or sensible 
media whatever. The will-force of man is a 
substantial force , its laws are related to those 
of common physical forces in its working upon 



2 MIND IS MATTER 

other organisms than its own. Its powers of 
outward influence are not limited to language 
and pantomine. Mental conditions and charac- 
ter are infectious, like diseases; or are vibratory, 
like rays of heat, light, or magnetism ; they 
have a blind, material, automatic force, aside 
from conscious moral and intellectual volition. 
"Whether that dynamic force upon other minds 
is an emanation of its substance, or a mere vi- 
bration or mode of motion upon intervening 
ether, will be discussed hereafter. 

"It is certainly agreeable to reason to believe that 
there are some slight effluxions from spirit to spirit 
"where men are in each other's presence, the same as 
from body to body. " — Lord Bacon. 

"Quite ordinary phenomena seem to indicate that 
the will of an individual does at times affect the ether 
or nerve atmosphere about him.'' — Hyland (J. Kirk. 

"And I experienced that extraordinary emotion 
which, like the magnetic fluid, surrounds extraordinary 
destinies." — George Sands. 

Napoleon Bonaparte imbued his spirit upon 
his army as directly and physically as any com- 
mon physical force is imparted. There was 
poured into his organism from the sources of 
space a volume and quantity of soul-force inde- 
pendent of heredity. It is a common thing for 
parents to recognize force and faculties in their 
offspring that are utterly untraceable in their 
ancestry. Soul has a vis inertia like any other 
substance. Men's characters and wills are strong 



MENTAL DYNAMICS. 3 

and weighty like their bodies, not alone morally, 
but substantially, or physically, as one mag- 
netic current is stronger than another. There 
is the same difference between the dynamic 
force of minds that there is between the fibre 
of bass wood and hickory, or as there is of 
density between gold and brass. The exercise 
of authority requires material strength of will. 
To command naturally, one needs actual, real 
material fibre and strength of soul, more than 
he does moral and intellectual scope. A human 
being's real character works out from him 
mechanically. If he be not real gold, no art will 
give him the true worth of gold ; if he be not 
good steel, no whetting will give him edge ; if 
he be bad, he cannot conceal it; if he be good, 
or strong, he will be felt without effort. All 
conditions of the mind radiate themselves with- 
out volition, as a flower does its fragrance or as 
the sun does its heat and warmth. Nothing in 
a soul can be concealed from sensitive and edu- 
cated observers. No lie was ever yet fully 
believed. The absence of inborn power and 
strength of will cannot be supplied by ambition, 
pretence, or even energy and courage ; and the 
want of inborn pride cannot be made up by 
affectation. What one is is felt and known by 
others. The soul cannot conceal any more than 
the sun can. 



4: MIND IS MATTER. 

" If a teacher has an opinion he wishes to conceal, 
his pupils will become as fully indoctrinated into that 
as into any which he publishes. If you would not be 
known as being anything, never be it." — Emerson. 

The vibratory principles now discovered in 
physics are so fine and attenuated that they 
become an analogy to mental or cerebral vibra- 
tions. The most prodigious physical effects are 
wrought by vibratory laws that are entirely 
unobservable to our senses, as much so as this 
assumed mental vibration. It is only imper- 
ceptible and inconceivably gentle vibrations 
from the sun that transform icy dead winter 
into vernal beauty ; and while they do not 
thwart the wing of the tiniest insect, they dis- 
lodge icebergs. Physicists tell us that eight bil- 
lions of vibrations are required to produce the 
color of the violet. Cut through a little tele- 
phonic wire and look at the end with the most 
powerful microscope and it will not reveal the 
molecular motion conveying the orchestral 
sounds. When we familiarize ourselves with 
the most attentuated conditions of matter, with 
the atomic theory, the wave philosophy of 
light, heat, sound, electricity, molecules, etc., 
those things will aid us in the realizing the sub- 
tle potency of this mind wave. In Prof essor You- 
man's Chemistry we find the following facts: — 
An ounce of gold may be divided by mechani- 
cal means into four hundred and thirty-two bil- 



MENTAL DYNAMICS. 5 

lion parts, each of which will contain all the 
qualities of the largest mass of that metal, and 
can be seen. Platinum wire may be drawn out 
so fine that it would take two hundred and fifty 
pieces to be as thick as a filament of raw silk. 
A spider's web is composed of six thousand fil- 
aments. On a drop of blood of a musk deer 
that is suspended on the point of a fine needle 
there are proven to be one hundred and twenty 
millions of discs. Professor Norton has divided 
color waves into sixty thousand to an inch and 
seven hundred and two trillion per second. It 
has been written that the duration of an elec- 
tric spark is less than the millionth part of a 
second, and the velocity of electricity through 
copper wire is two hundred and eighty-eight 
thousand miles per second. A galvanic battery 
no larger than a lady's thimble will telegraph 
under the ocean to another continent ; a mag- 
netic or electric current will, through the air, 
deflect a flame as a jet of air will, or consume an 
iron bolt like a jet of flame ; the nerve fluid 
courses through nerve pipes too fine for dis- 
covery by the unaided eye. The nearest fixed 
star is nineteen quadrillions of miles from us, 
yet its light will produce chemical effects here 
upon a photographic plate. Now, by these 
analogies, need we fix a limitation of distance to 
the magnetic power or magnetic susceptibility 



<<i 



6 MIND IS MATTER. 

of the human brain or mind ? The lightest of 
its vibrations may originate impulses in 
another brain. A mental emotion will cause 
heart throbs that will jar a whole house. Then, 
may not this emanative or radiating law of 
mind upon mind explain much of social power 
hitherto occult ? Bonaparte said that he often 
noticed the immediate electric effect of his 
arrival on the battlefield. Sympathy, intui- 
tion, instinct, are material contact with the 
objects of their direction. Dogs, cats, birds, 
and other animals, without geographical knowl- 
edge or calculation, have magnetic contact with 
the objects of their interest or affections. They 
don't l< smell" home fifty miles away. They 
are only living magnetic needles. Philosophers 
are now agreeing that this nerve fluid, animal 
magnetism, and the magnetism and electricity 
of the universe are identical; and we know that 
they penetrate, suffuse, and pass through any 
kind of matter. It is well known in military 
campaigns that each army is imbued with the 
characteristic and spirit of its commander. 
The mind of the leader may either send out a 
subtle essence, or may vibrate on the interven- 
ing ether, first upon his staff and immediate 
generals, and thence to others, aside from the 
technical transmission of verbal orders, or their 
subjective adoption, voluntarily, by the army. 



MENTAL DYNAMICS. 7 

"This is the influence which men, with what I may 
term great electrical power in their nature, have exercised 
in war. Caesar, Marlborough, Napoleon, Sir Charles 
Napier, and many others I could name, possessed it 
largely. The current passed from them into all around , 
creating great enthusiasm in all ranks far and near, 
and often making heroes of men whose mothers and 
fathers even had never regarded them in that light. 
This feeling is an addition of at least fifty per cent of 
strength and energy to the army where it exists." — 
Wolseley. 

Brain power, or mental emanation, is not 
alone moral force ; it is a material force. In an 
audience it becomes an influence upon brains 
and minds, either to oppress or assist, precisely 
and physically like pneumatic or hydraulic 
pressure, or the unseen influence upon a baro- 
meter. In the exercise of personal command, 
the force imparted is not merely moral or from 
legitimate authority — domestic or official — but 
there goes with the word of command from a 
natural commander a real objective force or 
fluid, that seizes upon the brain addressed, and 
inspires it with its own condition, or over- 
comes resistance by superior dynamic power, a 
kind of paralysis. Some parents corporeally 
punish their children because the parents have 
not this silent natural power. Some men govern 
by regulations, by law; or others by personal 
command and a sort of unseen prod and spur. 
I\egative people are heroic only when they are 
alone. A man in his study may write like a 



8 MIND IS MATTER. 

statesman or general, but not be able to control 
a corporal's guard by personal presence and con- 
tact; some persons, when closely observed, feel 
this benumbing influence; and some cannot sign 
their name, or execute upon a musical instru- 
ment when another is looking over their shoul- 
der. Passive people go to sleep in large audiences, 
benumbed magnetically. Stage- fright is often 
from this overwhelming magnetic counter- 
stream of an audience ; but sympathy of the 
| audience is lifting. Every platform entertainer 
I can testify to feeling the force of his listeners 
I for or against, as perceptibly as an electric cur- 
rent or draft of air. Blind performers can feel 
the power of their audience for or against them. 
Subjective and moral causes cannot account sat- 
isfactorily for these phenomena. All these 
things are facts. This personal magnetism is 
an unseen power greater to-day in the courts 
than the law, greater in the church than the 
gospel, greater in the state than the constitution. 
The world is still governed personally as of old. 
Laws would be dead letters without this person- 
al will-power infused into their administration. 
This element of personal influence has been 
described by Emerson in the word "character." 
He calls it " self-sufficiency," the "impossibility 
of being displaced or upset," " men in whom the 
largest of their power is latent." He says, 



MENTAL DYNAMICS. 9 

" What some men effect by talent or eloquence, 
this man accomplishes by magnetism." The 
following remark of his is to the point: 

" A river of command runs down from the eyes of 
some men, and the reason why we feel one man's pres- "P^ 

ence and not another's is as simple as gravity ; and 
this natural force is no more to be withstood than any 
other natural force." 

In the dynamics of nature there is practically 
no equilibrium. No two drops of water that 
join on a window pane meet each other half 
way ; one takes to itself the other. So it is in 
our mental and social relations ; no two human 
beings are to each other in equipoise. In every 
couple, group, society, community, assemblage, 
convention, nation, one person will have the 
ascendency, voluntarily or involuntarily. We 
either sway or are swayed. In our relations to 
society we are either positive or negative, and 
in this people vary in degree. Some people are 
constitutionally positive and some constitution- 
ally passive as to their influence with others. 
This force has nothing to do with intellectual 
gifts; and it more accounts for injustice and 
social inequalities in the world than education, 
birth, riches or luck. We have all noticed an 
irresistible influence or power of some other per- 
son, such as blustering, or even quiet stranger, 
an aggressive salesmen, boss or official, or a 
strong-minded friend, in whose presence our 



10 MIND IS MATTER. 

faculties were dazed, our will subjected, and 
against which influence we have struggled and 
determined, time after time, ineffectually. And 
we may have noticed the same subjection of 
some person or persons to ourselves. Who has 
not at some time of his life felt this mysterious 
and disagreeable thralldom, a dreaded, hated, 
but irresistible magic, and obeyed it against the 
clear dictates of judgment and even predeter- 
mination? We have seen the nominal slave 
• become the real master, the private soldier 
be the real commander, the junior in years 
overawe the senior, the wife rule the husband. 
Even kings have in self -disgust virtually abdica- 
ted to a strong-minded minister. Kichelieu was 
said to be " more than kins: — he was Richelieu." 
We have felt that this power comes from some 
copious, unseen, and natural fountain head ; 
that it is not a mere assumption or conceit, nor 
the result of adventitious aids, but that it is in- 
born and seems to come from temperament, 
\ fibre, weight, and is in mind exactly what den- 
' sity is in matter. Some men seem to have a 
specific gravity of soul, and the question here 
is whether we obey their suggestions or com- 
mands voluntarily, out of our respect, deference 
and fear, or is our subjection to them involuntary 
on account of some actual, silent force, which 
they radiate and with which they dispel or over- 



MENTAL DYNAMICS. 11 

come our own force, as wind blows away smoke. 
A man takes a chair every day in the same 
locality on the deck of an ocean steamer on the 
first day out, and although possessing no gifts 
of conversation or mind, nor parading any at 
tain men ts above the company of strangers, by 
this centrality, self -poise and fixedness of char- 
acter, he unaccountably makes that place the 
center of attraction for the voyage. Of course, 
persons were not attracted by him with the 
fatality and certainty of iron filings to a mag- 
net; they were intelligent beings, had free wills, 
and could have resisted his influence and kept 
aw r ay; but they were not so minded, and perhaps 
not conscious of the enthralling process going on. 
On another steamer w^e have seen a captain 
command and discipline his ship from shore to 
shore without a word. G. P. R. James said of 
Conzalvo de Cordoba, " He had that genius that 
convinces without argument and leads without 
persuasion." Universally in the army, during 
our war of volunteers, the best disciplined and 
most effective corps w r ere those of the quietest 
commanders. The mere personal presence of 
one man in a family, a gang of men, a large 
factory, or a camp, gives order and system; 
everything proceeds according to his will ; 
and that man may not have an intellectual 
gift or attainment that he can rate above others. 



12 MIND IS MATTER 

On the other hand, there are men of education, 
preception, courage, experience, who, though 
fretting themselves with "suggestion," com- 
mand and entreaty, rules and regulations, 
seem to have everything about them at loose 
ends in the matter of discipline. Power of com- 
mand is the same as power of muscles. A man 
who has not the innate power of command, 
would be as unable to command men as a man 
who is muscularly weak would be to overthrow 
. an athlete. It cannot be affected nor simulated. 
It is a gift or quality separate from intellectual 
clearness. Strength of will is strength of sub- 
stance. 

Why we obey one man more readily than an- 
other is because he has a stronger coercive chem- 
ical force of will, which is of the same essence ac- 
tually as .physical strength. Some natures are 
born to command, as some are born with certain 
other " gifts," and this overbearing power can- 
not be assumed. Of two partners, one will 
furnish the brains and the other the authority- 
The subordinates will neither fear nor obey the 
former, but they can with difficulty disobey the 
latter. And this obedience is not from fear, 
but it is as the wheel turns by the flume of 
water, actually and without metaphor. General 
Jackson's definition of a great man was — " He, 
who among a party, strangers to each other, 



MENTAL DYNAMICS. 13 

who are suddenly attacked by Indians, naturally 
assumes command." Daniel Webster defined a 
great man as — "He whose children obey him 
while he is absent." We find strong, positive, 
centralized, selfish individuals ; they absorb 
energy from everybody about them. Every 
great man is a hog. Such men build them- 
selves up from a thousand invisible mysterious 
sources. All things contribute to them, and they 
are called the "favored children of fortune." 
A strong individual in a domestic circle absorbs 
all the energy, monopolizes all attention; so in 
any combination of individuals — a business con- 
cern, church, club or convention, or legislature. 
So where any one faculty of one person pre- 
dominates, it absorbs like faculty from others 
around him. Centralization is a principle of the 
universe — in physical matter, in mind, in 
thought, in business, in politics, in everything. 
Mental phenomena are no exception. A large 
ball and a small one, each suspended by a thread; 
the large one deflects by gravitation the small 
one out of the vertical. So a mind will attract, 
absorb and control another mind. It is a mis- 
take to put the weak to sleep with the strong. 
The strong, while asleep, surely absorb what 
strength there is in the weak, unless there be 
active sympathy of the former to bestow, like 
the mother upon her infant, or the strong and 



14 MIND IS MATTER. 

affectionate and faithful husband upon his del- 
icate wife. Many a wife eats meat and bread 
for her husband's strength. She transfers to 
him ready-made vitality, which is better than 
transfusion of blood. The sympathy of parents 
is a substantial nurture to infants. The positive 
soul lays embodied and disembodied souls under 
contribution; it is called " magical," " mag- 
netic." How many mysterious things in social 
conduct and individual success and failure are 
'explained by this principle. Negative persons 
have no success except in hard work ; no safety 
except in isolation. Passive and positive indi- 
viduals can be known at sight, both physiog- 
nomically and phrenologically ; and in that way 
we can tell persons who have a reputation 
among their acquaintances for "luck," which is 
a blind, crude name for occult magnetic sense 
and power. Of all the personal contests in 
tournaments, or modern fisticuffs, or duelists 
with rapier and pistol, the eye and stream of 
magnetism have made the muscles falter. Man 
can be stared down, their weapons made to fall, 
and their aim or guard diverted by this current 
of cold mental lightning from eye to eye. We 
have seen a fragile woman in a cage of lions ; 
we see a child of six years drive a herd of cat- 
tle ; a woman drills a platoon of elephants. 
There is no " moral " influence in all this ; it is a 



MENTAL DYNAMICS. 15 

psychic or magnetic force. What morals or 
reasoning have brutes ? Born orators are born 
tyrants. A negative student may write a speech, 
and with him it will fall flat upon the multitude; 
but some positive, hard-headed, practical, sturdy 
man will take only two or three of those expres- 
sions and send them through us like iron spears. 
It makes all the difference in the world which 
man say s a thing. 

This personal will-power is natural, not culti- 
vated ; snowing that it is force, not morals ; that 
it is a reality, not conceit. Observe the tower- 
ing examples of human will-power and personal 
influence along through history; how inborn it 
has been. Moral and intellectual causes alone 
do not account for this phenomenal difference in 
men's power of command where they are finan- 
cially and intellectually equal. At twenty 
Alexander showed a proud will, an imperious 
temper, and had been all through his father's 
wars ; at twenty- one he mounted the throne and 
immediately imbued his army with a new pow- 
er that conquered the world. The greatest gen- 
erals and kings of the earth were dragged cap- 
tive by this "boy general." Abbott says that 
he was lifted above national feeling, and do- 
minion over the world became his master pas- 
sion. The same author tells us that Caesar at 
twenty-eight had conquered three hundred na- 



16 MIND IS MATTER. 

tions, taken eight hundred cities, handled three 
millions of soldiers, captured one million prison- 
ers, and caused the killing of a million of men. 
When twenty-seven years old he saw the statue 
of Alexander in Spain and wept because he too 
had not conquered the world. On coming to a 
little Swiss village he said to one of his generals, 
"I would rather be first here than second in 
Kome." William the Norman was said to be 
like a " tower, a tempest, a thunderbolt." The 
historian Green says, " Boy as he was, horse and 
man went down before his lance. He arose to 
his greatest height when the other men des- 
paired. " Napoleon at the age of twenty-six took 
command of an army of invasion against the old- 
est country and principalities of Europe. He im- 
mediately told the grey -bearded generals to 
commence new principles in war. At Boulogue, 
where he gathered the army of the whole em- 
pire, had brought the whole French fleet, and 
placed his sumptuous marquee in the midst, he 
drew his riding whip on the admiral of the fleet, 
an officer twice his age, and with an imperious 
gesture simply said "Go." Princes and kings 
paid humble tribute to this strong man from the 
people. Whether dictating to other kings in 
their own palaces or indifferently noticing them 
as they came to the roadside when he passed, or 
mending his own coat among his staff at 



MENTAL DYNAMICS. 17 

St. Helena, he was the same overhearing, self- 
conscious will-power, and would take a prom- 
inent general by the ear as he would a boy. 
Henry IV. when fifteen, at the battle of Shrews- 
bury, was a hero ; at sixteen he struck the 
chief justice in the face, and then manfully 
submitted to punishment for contempt of court ; 
at nineteen he conducted a campaign alone. 
The Duke of Alva was called a "child warrior," 
and was always arbitrary, cold, and calculating. 
Cromwell was said to be a bully and a gambler at 
seventeen. Marshall Turenne, it is said, when 
taunted at the age of ten with being too feeble 
in constitution to become a soldier, ran away 
and slept a whole winter's night upon a cannon ; 
at eleven years of age he challenged an officer 
to a duel. The great Conde brought on a battle 
at twenty-two against the advice of his old gen- 
erals. He always led his charges in person and 
charged fifteen times in one battle. General 
Wolfe, was one of the most distinguished offi- 
cers at the age of twenty- three, and was killed 
at the head of an army at the age of thirty-four. 
General Washington was the commander of a 
Virginia militia at the age of twenty-four, and 
had a national reputation. 

Napoleon selected agents of such psychic 
force to execute his will. Note these examples 
of magnetic power. Augereau was said to - ' tear 



18 MIND IS MATTER. 

through the ranks of the enemy with headlong 
fury;" he was marsh all of France at twenty- 
four. St. Cyr was general of a division at 
thirty-two. Lannes was killed at thirty-two, 
and Napoleon wept at it. Mortier showed his 
personal influence in his steady " command of 
common time " at retreat of Crasnoi ; and 
McDonald showed it in holding his division 
where it is said, "The round shot crashed through 
the serried masses like the rattling of hail." 
Soult said, " Soldiers who can undertake what 
I can are fit to be conquerors of the world." 
Junot was called the ' i Tempest. " Murat fought 
six duels before he was twenty-two. He was 
commander of an army before he was thirty- 
two. Headley says of him, " Mounted, he was 
a magnificent spectacle, plunging single-hand- 
ed like a thunderbolt into the ranks of the ene- 
my." Massena was called " the favorite child of 
victory;" and Napoleon said of him, "You 
alone are equivalent to six thousand men." 
Victor was called " The Terrible." He was gen- 
eral of a division at twenty-nine. Oudinot 
"made his solders stand like a wall of iron." 
Napoleon said of Bessierres, "A slight wound of 
him would give the whole army the lockjaw." 
Suchet received six sabre wounds in one battle. 
Ney was a hero of ^n^ hundred battles, and at 
Waterloo lost five horses under him. Our own 



MENTAL DYNAMICS. 19 

Commodore Perry built, equipped, and fought a 
fleet to victory, at the age of twenty-eight. 

What is this power some men have over 
others ? Is it the faculty of ready obedience in 
the race where it recognizes superiority ? " Sug- 
gestive hypnotism " does not seem to account 
for the vastness and universality of the in- 
fluence. Why such a difference in men with 
apparently the same physiological structure and 
opportunities. 

" Now in the name of all the gods at once, 
Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed 
That he lias grown so great ?" 

Some men seem to be born into the middle of 
great affairs and take to them naturally. Some 
historical personages were never boys, but 
always men. William Pitt is the most fasci- 
nating and born civil example of this class in 
all history. Macaulay says of him, " He was 
a distinguished member of the House of Com- 
mons at the age of twenty-one. In the midst 
of such triumphs as parliamentary leader Pitt 
completed his twenty-fifth year. He was now 
the greatest subject England ever had seen dur- 
ing many generations. He domineered abso- 
lutely over the cabinet, and was the favorite at 
once of the sovereign, of the parliament and of 
the" nation. He had a high intrepid spirit, was 
incapable of low vices, fear or envy, and was 



20 MIND IS MATTER. 

proudly conscious of his own rectitude and 
intellectual superiority." 

This precocity and naturalness of personal 
influence has been characteristic of all the 
world's great premiers and statesmen. Mira- 
beau was " Precocious, impetuous, dignified, 
and magnetic in oratory and in love." It has 
been said of Alexander Hamilton that "He 
never was a boy in character." He came to 
America at the age of fifteen, without acquaint- 
ance or station, but such was his genius and 
force that he at once entered the best of society 
and positions of employment. At nineteen he 
was a leading artillery officer ; at twenty a 
revolutionary officer, orator, aid-de-camp and 
confidential friend of Washington. He would 
not brook any harsh exercise of even Washing- 
ton's personality; and when there was a rupture 
between them, when Hamilton was twenty-one, 
he suggested that it should be concealed from 
the army, as it might weaken the revolutionary 
cause. J". C. Breck en ridge said of Henry Clay, 
■ 'He never acknowledged a superior." Lord 
dive was a poor clerk in the East India depart- 
ment, and in his 'teens displayed a fiery and 
unmanageable temper. At twenty five he had 
acquired a great reputation for desperate cour- 
age, fertility of resources and command ; and 
soon afterwards successfully defended a garri- 



MENTAL DYNAMICS. 21 

son with five hundred men against ten thous- 
and # Turks and East Indians. Such are 
examples of direct personal influence by men 
of action. 

But there are men of ideas and " suggestion " 
who have no hynoptic influence and who extend 
the suggestive effect of their intellects through- 
out generations, but are not illustrations of this 
personal and contemporary force or sway. An 
inventor, a poet, a philosopher, a scientist, may 
by his works, benefit mankind through the 
whole course of time and may be called great, 
yet be of a timid, diffident and embarrassed dis- 
position. Two men of equal literary power 
and posthumous influence may be opposites in 
contemporary or personal influence. Genius, 
industry, self-sacrifice, ambition, energy and 
endurance, imagination and art may exist and 
have their influence without selfish domination, 
and they will produce fame. Observe the two 
friends, Sam. Johnson and Oliver Goldsmith. 
Johnson was violent, leonine, and was called 
the " Giant of English Literature." His biogra- 
pher says, "His passions were irritable; he had 
a fierce independent spirit, a dictatorial man- 
ner, and forced his meaning by a loud voice. 
In literary encounters, when the contention was 
for personal superiority, he would come out into 
actual ferocity." Garrick says "He was tre- 



22 MIND IS MATTER. 

mendous." On the other hand, Goldsmith, his 
companion, was passive, sensitive, and timid. 
He was the butt of Johnson's jokes, although 
Johnson loved him. Irving sums up his char- 
acter in calling him, "Poor Goldsmith." Our 
own Thomas Jefferson at the age of thirty-two 
had become the founder of one of the greatest 
political parties in the history of the world and 
has cast the character of a great nation. He 
became a voluminous author, renowned for his 
works, and yet we are told " he was shy, 
reserved and sensitive, and never sought to 
impress his own personality upon others." 
Ruskin has been called "childlike." Hans 
Christian Anderson was " embarrassed in man- 
ner and displayed an amount of childlike sim- 
plicity that was very annoying to his friends." 
It was said that By rant was "amiable, reserved, 
and simple even to shyness; " and Longfellow 
was said to be averse by temperament to any- 
thing that was " harsh and repellant." Adam 
Smith was "artless, simple, and sensitive." Joa- 
quin Miller has told us that Tennyson is "shy and 
retiring." We have been told that the inventor 
Ericsson was " too diffident to live." We see 
that some of the world's greatest benefactors 
have been destitute of personal force and con- 
temporary influence. Their " suggestive 
hypnotism " was not apparent. Pitt, at 



MENTAL DYNAMICS. 23 

twenty-one, was master of Parliament and of 
England ; but Christopher Wren, the great 
architect, and also a member of Parliament, 
describes himself as a " blushing youth of 
twenty -five." 

We find this personal magnetism among driv- 
ing, harsh, successful business men ; we see it 
predominant in money marts, and in political 
leaders. Men having this power are prompt, 
quick, and executive. They have a natural 
impressiveness ; they drive rough -shod over the 
sensibilities of others and care little for details. 
They are strong in temperament, connected in 
mental operation, without sympathy or sensi- 
tiveness ; are healthy, ambitious, and often 
avaricious. They naturally take to public life ; 
authority sits easily upon them. They are the 
bosses ; they make good salesmen and "drum- 
mers;"' they are good military leaders when 
they have moral courage — for physical courage 
cannot face a cannon ball any more than it can 
a locomotive. They are born and natural gov- 
ernors, fit for feudalism. They are active and 
aggressive in all their manners ; they run risks, 
and have ordained that cast-iron character and 
method in great business marts ; they seldom 
swerve in purpose or wilt under personal 
oppression. They can " stand pressure;" they 
can say " no." When you discover such a man 



24 MIND IS MATTER. 

is not guided by moral principles, give him no 
opportunity, repose no faith in him ; do not 
trust yourself within his influence ; fight his 
magnetism with your own, and circumvent 
him with every device or cunning as you would 
a wild beast, Such men dread and respect 
moral qualities in others. All contact with 
these positive temperaments is sure to leave a 
blister of some kind. 

. The passive man is simply lacking in this one 
element of magnetic aggressiveness ; he may 
have all other faculties — ambition, energy, 
genius, motive, " suggestion," and even cour- 
age in high degree, but he is soft, and when 
opposed is limber. He may have a good mind 
and social position, yet be without influence. 
He is retired, sympathetic, and kindly ; pro- 
priety is always his bugaboo and destroys his 
usefulness. It is he that pleads the briefs in 
office, while the positive man uses them at the 
bar. He invents in the shop, while the positive 
man raises the stock companies and makes the 
money ; he is the author, while the positive man 
is the publisher ; he does the world much good, 
while the other does harm ; he is the man of 
thought, the other is the man of action; he 
shrinks from contest, and yet often is a willing 
martyr ; the positive man courts conflict, but 
selfishly stops short of martyrdom ; the passive 



MENTAL DYNAMICS. 25 

or negative man has a thousand clear plans 
t hat are never heard of, while the other often 
blunders ahead without plans and makes good 
strokes at random and by the instinct of high 
courage ; the passive man is never happy with- 
out approval, while the positive man "goes it 
alone." Clothed with power the passive man u 
uneasy, and rules by .principle and law, not by 
personal will ; his shyness and refinement make 
others think he is aristocratic, while at heart he 
is a true democrat ; but the positive man by his 
bluff manner wears a mask of complaisance 
and equality over real tyranny. We love the 
negative man ; we fear the positive man. The 
passive man gives good work for his pay, while 
the other gets good pay for his work. The 
passive person is the slave ; the positive person 
the master. The positive man is always opu- 
lent in his impudence ; all he wants is men or 
women to work upon, then his fortune is made. 
He seeks society and prominence for the pleas- 
ure of exercising his power, as wrestlers do the 
arena ; the negative man avoids the crowd. 
The passive man is the altruist ; the positive 
man is the egoist. Negative people adapt them- 
selves to society in accordance with taste and 
their fitness. Positive people chronically force 
themselves into notice and take part without 
regard to their intellectual or aesthetic adapta- 



26 MIND IS MATTER. 

tion. Passive people are always doing for 
others and scattering blessings ; positive people 
are always absorbing them. The positive man 
is born great ; the negative man achieves great- 
ness. The positive man has self -poise ; and 
this is what men admire, instinctively follow 
and gather about, and flunkey to more than to 
any other quality. Moral influences may 
account in some degree for that centripetal ten- 
dency, but mechanical or material attraction 
will account for it better. That weight of 
character which stands unmoved, or that goes 
like an iron ship directly and cannot be sheered 
off, is doubtless allied to a material density of 
soul atoms. There may be soul atoms finer 
than physical atoms. As the chemical atoms of 
substances differ in size, weight and density, so 
do atoms in different souls. Two lads may 
start out in the morning of life together, equal 
in fortune, education and opportunity. "A" 
will have an active, subtle intellect, health, 
ambition, and will excel and distance " B " in 
study, degree, and in every quality of intellect 
and industry. But when they come among 
men, opposition and rivalry, "B" will easily 
push away what lies across his path, or will 
gradually gather about him worshippers and 
toadies who are enchanted with his " iron keel" 
and the grace and coolness of his command, 



MENTAL DYNAMICS. 27 

his self-possession and gravity of demeanor. 
Of all things, men most despise nimbleness and 
"gush," no matter how much merit accom- 
panies it. Silent men are generally most 
influential. And it is not always from mystery, 
nor a supposition of something latent in them, 
but it is also from the solidity of their natures 
that sways us and is instinctively recognized 
and felt by us. Without this natural gravity 
there can be no success in politics, which 
depends more upon personal momentum in 
encounters than upon astute management, 
although both, joiued, are indispensable. A 
great statesman or a national politician, will 
magnetically draw from near and far in the 
country, the silent, mysterious and involuntary 
support of individuals as the sun calls back to 
it from distant spaces the meteors, comets, 
cosmic mist and planets ; or by the same unseen 
thews and sinews that the vast Sideral systems 
bind their ponderous spheres in obedient orbits. 
What gave Stanley control, single handed, of 
men, savage and civilized, for months within a 
forest world, without help from the law, with- 
out family name, riches or official station, or 
the prestige of regular scholarship, when those 
followers could have at any instant said " Nay" 
to his commands ? He, alone, pushed a thousand 
of them on, on, on through despairing weari- 



28 MIND IS MATTER. 

ness, vexation, disease, death ; and all of them — 
governor, mutinous armed troops, aristocratic 
emulous military officers, and barbarians know- 
ing little of moral force or responsibility, were 
unconsciously enthralled to his inborn mag- 
netic current. There were men who had as 
much courage as he, as much ambition as he, 
as much endurance as he, and more education 
and adventitious aids than he, but none had his 
material fibre of soul. None of these qualities 
mentioned would have enabled them to over- 
come a psychic athlete, any more than their 
inferior physical strength could match a gladi- 
ator. Mental strength is like muscular strength ; 
it is not alone in the will or determination. 
The will is an abstract thought or operation of 
mind. The power that the will can exert is 
another abstract quality of material reality. 

The next chapter will be a metaphysical 
argument in behalf of thfc fiieor of a soul 
substance. 



CHAPTER II. 



THINKING MATTER. 

The conscious ego differentiated into mind and soul — The soul 
a corporeity, the miud is the consciousness of that corporeity — 
The soul consists of particles of substance that have the quality 
of sentience as atoms have the quality of energy — Idealism 
considered — Objective things are what they seem to be — 
Matter is real and objective to the mind, connate with mind, 
and sentience adheres in matter as gravitation does, although 
we can never understand either mystery — Mind and matter 
are one. amalgum — Zschoke — God in the atom — Soul and God 

Iare not metaphysical conjectures, but are physical facts — 
There is no "immaterial substance" — There is no dead matter — 
A fine electric fluid within the body is probably the habitat 
of consciousness — The wonderful physical fact of localizing 
the mind — Professor Ladd — Dr. Hammond — Matter not a 
surplus ; it is the eternal companion of spirit — Morals and 
matter indissolubly related — The persistency of matter and 
its eternicity a guaranty of the soul's immortality — Electric- 
ity and life — Definition of soul — Conscious matter — Tyndatt, 
Spinoza, JSc/ielling, P. J. Cook — The sexual energy of atoms — 
Atoms are life principle, molecules are sexed organisms. 

Mind, if understood as synonymous with soul, 
is matter as tve understand matter to be. But 
mind as mere sentience — abstract consciousness, 
volition, intelligence — is not matter as we com- 
monly understand matter. The popular con- 
ception of the term Mind is the thinking part of 
man ; and most people add, that which lives 

29 



\ 



30 MIND IS MATTER. 

after death ; and it is generally but vaguely 
believed, also, that it is purely ideal, not a sub- 
stance, but a mere sentient ego ; that there are 
only physical body and intelligence. The term 
Soul is better for that unseen part of man that 
is not the body, that is immortal, and from 
which flow thought and character. The mind 
has a soul-body within the physical body. Sen- 
tient-Mind is only the experience of the soul— 
an awakenness and recollection of some other 
thing than itself. Soul can never be without 
mind ; body can. A soul would have largely a 
different mind on the planet Mars from its mind 
here, because both its material temperament 
and its outlook would be different. We have 
a mind, in one sense, according to our education 
and surroundings ; it is the enlightment of the 
soul. Soul is the body or organ of the mind,, 
and as such they are inseparable forever. Mind 
and soul are one ; soul and body are two. Soul 
is a refined, subtle essence, a spiritual body 
within the animal body, an ultimate, indecom- 
posable, etherial matter, something like an elec 
trie body^ and, as such, quite as material as 
rock or pig iron, and is conscious by its nature, 
as atoms are cohesive by their nature. 



THINKING MATTER. 31 

[It is necessary to make this parenthetical 
diversion in the outset. 

There is one bridge in this subject that it 
seems the human reason cannot cross ; it is the 
contact of thought, or will, with matter, if 
those two things are abstract to each other. We 
all agree that the actions of the soul are not 
matter ; volition, reason, sentience are not mat 
ter any more than motion is part of a machine. 
By adopting the Berkeley theory, however, that 
all is mind or abstract sentience, that matter is 
only a dream — a mental operation, then we can 
understand how mind influences matter, 
because matter, then, is mind, or of the same 
nature. Wherein is a graphic, orderly and 
intense dream different to the dreamer from 
real life ? Many are coming to adopt the theory, 
in order to cross that bridge of logical difficulty, 
that matter is only the expression of the Creative 
mind and thus allied to us as delusions. Mind 
cannot be an expression of matter, because mind, 
as a free agent, is so often the first moving 
cause, it moves against bodily inclination, and 
because we cannot conceive of the creation of 
abstract matter out of nothing, and before 
mind. But matter could not be the expression 
of mind, unless all minds w r ere connected, see- 
ing the same delusions. There is no more rea- 
son for denying the separate existence of matter 



32 MIND IS MATTER, 

because the five senses do not recognize it, than 
there is because any one sense does not recog- 
nize it. Waiving now the question whether 
there be any more than the five common senses 
that can realize objective realities, we can yet 
say that although the phenomena of matter are 
subjective — that is, though extension, hardness, 
sound, color, smell and taste are qualities in the 
mind, yet there is some thing out of the mind 
that produces those phenomena in the mind. 
There are separate concurrences of testimonies 
as to the objective reality of matter that seem 
to form an argument. If there were only one 
mind, that mind might imagine the universe ; 
it might be all a dream, a fantasy. But here 
are millions of minds having no connection 
with each other, bearing precisely the same 
testimony in detail as to outward things. E g., 
I am walking alone on the sea beach. As far 
as I can see it is solitude. I find a trunk cast 
up by the waves. I open it. I find in it a 
hundred articles, to me exotic. An India 
shawl, with patterns of birds and animals new 
to me ; beads, teeth of animals curiously carved, 
toilet articles, a manuscript of an original story 
that I read ; in short, everything unique and 
strange to me. I go away. For all I know it 
may be a dream. But I have taken a written 
inventory in detail. Another person comes 



THINKING MATTER. 33 

along alone and finds the same. A dream! A 
hundred do. To each, isolated, perhaps a 
dream. But the hundred compare inventories ; 
the matter is the subject of a judicial investiga- 
tion regarding a murder, shipwreck, piracy, 
legacy. The articles in that trunk become sub- 
jects of public record. Are they now a subjective 
fancy or an objective fact by concurrence of the 
testimony of hundreds of isolated minds, who 
have no reason for being keyed so much alike 
as to dream the' same words and sentiments 
throughout the manuscript, or the same exotic 
pictures of animals, flowers and scenes ? The 
conjecture that God would impress all these 
minds alike with the same subjective ideas, 
without the objective reality, or that so many 
different and isolated minds simply match in 
all these details of subjective fancy, or that one 
mind can dream of all that those concurring 
minds do, is beyond all balanced intelligence, 
and going into the realms of childish mythology 
and jack-and-the-bean-stalk fantasies. 

Consider a great public library with its dic- 
tionaries, books of reference, newspaper files, 
containing millions of topics and billions of sep- 
arate, distinct objects of type. Myriads of 
separate people, during successive ages, for all 
time, will see those objects and concur as to 
them with exact and arithmetical certainty. 



34 MIND IS MATTER. 

Are those billions of exact concurrences mere 
coincidences of fancy, mere similar dreams, or 
are they real objective facts, independent of 
anybody's perception ? What toying for the 
Almighty to afflict us with this deception! 
Can anybody point out any harm in things 
being what they seem to be ? Are all those 
objectivities imaginings of the Divine mind, 
and are we his reflections or echoes ? 

We can never understand how thought 
comes in contact with matter if matter is 
objective to thought. But thought IS in con- 
tact with matter, and is localized in the body . 
How comes it that we all have the idea of real 
existence of matter, as separate from and anti- 
thetical to the mind? Why is there necessity 
for delusions and deceptions ? Although the 
essence of matter is unknown to us, it is some-' 
thing objective to us that creates impressions 
within us, such as its size, color, taste, smell 
and sound. When those internal impressions 
are not existent it will not, on that account, do 
to say there is nothing that can produce them, 
any more than it would be for a blind man to 
say there is no post before him because he can- 
not see it. If lie should run his nose against it 
he still would say there was no post if he had 
neither feeling, smelling, tasting or hearing. 
Of course, if a man should run against it who 



THINKING MATTER. 35 

had no senses, there would be no post to him, 
bat there would be to other people. Now, if all 
humanity had none of the five senses, there 
would be no evidence of any post at all in the 
world, and yet there would be a post. But there 
might be intelligent beings, etherial in their 
nature, who could recognize the essence of the 
post without the five subjective mortal phe- 
nomena. There must be some objective things 
that create similar cognitions in an infinitude 
of separate minds. Are we scintillations of 
one separate mind, imagining what He 
imagines, and connected with Him, we having 
only a limited or qualified ego ? This thought 
may, after all, be the way out of this difficulty 
of connecting mind with matter, — namely, that 
there is but one mind embracing the infinitude 
of human minds and that the objectivities of 
matter are of, and born, in that one parent 
mind. Our ego is not a logical certainty. 
To illustrate : — It is within practical mechani- 
cal analogy that a powerful central telephone 
may be made to speak to every village in the 
nation. Autographs can now be sent by tele- 
graph. If autographs may, then engravings 
may ; and the next step would be camera scenes, 
which could be magnified by screen lanterns. 
Thus, an operatic performance, or an oration, 
or the commands of a king at the capital of a 



36 MIND IS MATTER. 

nation, could be perceived everywhere as 
actually as it" present at the central source, all 
minds brought into ocular and auricular con- 
tact. How like spirit-life is this, forecast, 
brought home to us and realized by material 
experiment ! In these analogies we can under- 
stand that mystery of the contact of mind and 
matter by recognizing matter as the product of 
one central mind with which we are all connec- 
ted. But if there be two really separate exis- 
tent things, as mind and matter, we must hold 
that they are commingled, however mysterious 
the connection is, and that they never can exist 
without that commingling. The Berkeley theory 
would require only one ego. We know we are 
not all one ego because we hate, shun, mis- 
understand and fight each other, and live in 
distant countries and separate centuries. Now 
w r e will leave this parenthesis and proceed with 
our subject by regarding mind and matter as 
two differentiations of one thing as those 
differentiations are commonly understood.] 



Mind is resident in and with matter as blue is 
resident in and w r ith indigo, as crystals are in 



THINKING MATTER. 37 

and of salt, as granules are resident in and of 
iron. There can be no indigo without the blue 
(or the thing in it that makes the blue) and no 
blue without the indigo ; there can be no salt 
without the crystals, and no crystals without 
the salt ; there can be no granules without the 
iron, and no iron without granules. There can 
be no snail without the shell and no shell with- 
out the snail ; and the germ of the shell and the 
germ of the snail are coexistent through all the 
snail's successive ancestral protoplasms, away 
back to the first primordial impulse. There can 
be no ice without water and no water without 
ice. Essentially ice is water and water is ice ; 
fragrance is rose and rose is fragrance ; indigo is 
blue and blue is indigo ; matter is cohesion and 
cohesion is matter. None of these things can 
be separated. Two abstractions that are insep- 
arable from each other and dependent upon each 
other are of the same essence and ego. In the 
same way mind is matter. Metal phenomena 
are of, with, in, and from matter as sweetness 
(or the thing that makes sweetness) is of sugar, 
as fragrance is of flowers, as mind is of physiol- 
ogy, as cohesion is of atoms. But all this may 
as well be reversed in conception, regarding flow- 
ers of fragrance, sugar of sweetness, and matter 
of mind. We don't know which is the generic, 
but we do know that these pairs of phenomena 



38 MIND IS MATTER. 

are mutually dependent from first to last, before 
man and after him, born together, and there- 
fore are of one and the same essence. We know- 
that sweetness and fragrance are only mental 
qualities, but those mental qualities are born of 
objective things, unless we are all fooled. And 
w r hy should we be fooled ? 

We are aware also that, in logical consistency, 
if we claim that the non-material will of the 
atom dominates the body of the atom, we must 
admit the non-material will of the man domin- 
ates the body of the man, and therefore that 
non-matter influences matter. Thought is not 
matter ; thought influences the body ; but 
[ thought has to have a material basis itself ; that 
is it cannot exist without matter ; it influences 
the body through its own matter. This requires 
thinking matter. How mind comes in contract 
with matter is not the question. The non-mat- 
erial sentience may dominate matter and yet 
be indispensably connected with and of matter. 
The two phenomena — matter and mind — being 
associated, it is not precluded one having the 
mastery and initiative in action. Nor, because 
one has free agency, or the initiative, is it 
necessarily independent. We urge the fact, not 
the why of the fact. As in the mortal life, so 
in the immortal life, mind cannot be or act with- 
out a body All phenomena and all analogy 



THINKING MATTER. 39 

show that mentality and matter are connate and 
inseparable, and that the soul, which is the 
organ of the mind, is a material substance and 
at times it may operate regardless of bodily 
media and conditions, giving physical power of 
will and personal dominion. It grows as other 
matter grows, is enduring and persistent like 
all other elements, preserves its identity and 
continuity precisely as the body does, and is im- 
mortal because of more homogeneous and ulti- 
mate essence than the physiology. Kepeated 
shocks will disintegrate and weaken the fibre 
of the soul as they will the fibre of iron. 

" The soul is, consequently, the sensitive organ, 
not the body, and is therefore the true and real body 
of the spirit, and the body is only its outward frame- 
work, its shell and covering." — Zschoke. 

Mental qualities are of, in, and by matter, as 
gravitation is of, in, and by matter. The two 
phenomena, mentality and cohesion, are equal 
and parallel mysteries to us. Mind and soul 
are two abstractions of one thing, the Ego. 
They are the sentience and the thing that is 
sentient ; or what are commonly understood 
as mind and matter, are, without regard to the 
physiology, coexistent, coeternal, and inalienable 
by nature and creation. Neither one is generic 
or independent of the other. They are created 
together. Until we can understand or deny the 



40 MIND IS MATTER. 

cohesion of matter we need not cavil about the 
mentality of matter. One is as knowable, rea- 
sonable, necessary, and natural as the other. 
There is no faculty within us that could predicate 
the cohesion of matter. We know it only by 
experience. The savage regards the attraction of 
the magnet with awe ; and we, as children, first 
observe gravitation with terrified interest. 

There is no other way to account for energy 
in matter and the conservation of force than by 
the direct and present volition of God in each 
atom. The groping of conceited " scientists" 
without this idea, is senseless, heathenish, un- 
grateful, materialistic and also unscientific. The 
self-styled "physicists" struggle obstinately to 
account for life and energy upon mechanical 
principles. 

" I may best express what I mean by saying that I 
think they (the scientists) are more apt to feel an affec- 
tion for one's bleached skull and frame of unsightly 
bones, than for what is divine within a man. If one 
talks about the inner beauty, which, to some of us is 
the only beauty worthy anything, they are apt to 
yawn, and to return an apologetic and compassionate 
smile. They seem to wish you to infer that they have 
explored the body through and through, and that it is 
waste of time to discuss what only exists in the imagi- 
n ation . " — Sta rdey. 

We cannot have a natural or rational concep- 
tion of force except as sentient volition. The 
silent, mysterious, awe inspiring monster mag- 
net, that will, like a sullen giant, lift three 



THINKING MATTER. 41 

tons, crush a man's bones or tear his muscles 
asunder, impresses us naturally as being instinct 
with independent sentient life. Iron alone, 
inert, dead, cannot do this. Cohesion is life 
and sentient will. The visible material hand is 
not revealed to us in the magnet, but will-power 
and force is no more mysterious there, in that 
dead horseshoe, than it is in flesh and blood. 
What is the difference in the power of the mag- 
net from the unthinking clutch of a man in 
sleep or trance ? 

"Energy is going into the maguet all the time it is 
doing work — energy in some form. Where does it 
come from — gravity ? atmosphere ? solar rays ? earth 
rays ? Who can say ? It is a great problem, worthv 
of a life-time of indefatigable research. It is a microbe 
and it will be discovered, and the discovery will make 
electricity the queen of nature's forces, and steam will 
become a dim vision of the dark ages of the past.'" — 
Electrical Review. 

We may be able to cite as many phenomena 
proving mentality in matter as there are prov- 
ing mind in matter. At least we never saw 
mental manifestation without the presence of 
matter, and it is but common induction to 
infer therefore they are one thing. There are 
not two ultimate and antithetical divisions of 
the Universe, as mind and matter, finally 
abstract and independent of each other. The 
Universe is one. There is no supernatural ; 
all is natural ; all is related, cause and sequence. 



42 MIND IS MATTER. 



"Nothing exists but substance and its modes of 
motion." — Spinoza. 

"Nothing comes from nothing. That which exists 
can never be annihilated." — Epicurus. 



Ill connection with the intelligent part of 
man, came into vogue the term soul, as related 
to man's futurity ; and by reason of short think- 
ing upon the subject, soul has been regarded as 
a sort of insubstantial endowment or title, 
without conditions, locality, parts, or form ; a 
vague, indeterminate, unfixed, guessed-at, 
thing-no-thing. But some of the ancients, 
through ignorance of the subtiler elements of 
nature — the elemental gases, the etherial wrap, 
electricity, the nerve fluid, the nebular heavens, 
atomicity, etc., gave to this intangible but liv- 
ing part of man the crude term " breath,' 7 thus 
implying their, belief in it as a substance of 
some kind. (Hebrew — ruali ; Greek — pneuma.) 
All through the New and Old Testaments the 
term " breath " is given to the soul. With the 
inspired writers the belief in angels and spirits 
was more concrete than ours, which is mere 
conjecture. Most people make a spirit a mere 
detached memory. Mankind to day, with all 
their wisdom and practical knowledge, their 
science and theology, have no settled, clear 
belief, excepting in blind faith, relating to the 
origin, essence and destiny of the soul. In 



THINKING MATTER. 43 

psychology they are studying only consequences, 
not causes ; phenomena, not essence. Theolo- 
gians are forever shooting in the air from mak- 
ing God and the soul mere metaphysical objects 
which practical people will not bother their 
heads about, especially in cities where time is 
so valuable, where it is hard to get a living, and 
where w r isdom is so condensed. 

But the thought is just now crystallizing 
everywhere that the soul is an enduring sub- 
stance, has its creation among other material 
objects, has laws of action like all other mate- 
rial forces, and has a direct, emanative, or 
dynamic power over other minds, aside from its 
moral, intellectual or " suggestive " force, and 
that it is immortal because it is matter. That 
thing w r hich we call matter, whatever it is, will 
always exist in some condition along with 
mind. If we are made up of only body and 
sentience, then when the body is destroyed the 
sentience or soul is destroyed with it, for there 
can be no normal conception of a disconnected 
immaterial or abstract sentience. Such a belief 
would be simple brute materialism. But if 
there be a soul-body of ultimate unresolvable 
matter, something like electricity, ether, or 
X; material atoms, cohering by self will, as mortal 
life does, after bodily dissolution, that is a true 
and rational spiritualism and the most interest- 



44 MIND IS MATTER. 

ing part of psychology. If this sentient part 
of man live after death, and if it be a real thing, 
its laws and workings now in society become a 
most practical and interesting subject. If it be 
an objective force it is scientifically related to all 
other forces in nature — real forces, not conjec- 
tural or moral forces. If we say to a stone 
move, and it do not move, that is not conclusive 
that the will is not matter nor that there is no 
material impingement upon matter by the will. 
The arm is matter and we say to it move, and 
it does move. What is the difference between 
the arm and the stone as to the law of contact 
between will and matter ? We simply do not 
understand it. We cannot prove the sentience 
of inorganic matter, nor the contact of mind with 
inorganic matter, but that is not proof that 
they are not interrelated like all the gamut 
of creation. We have not a single demon- 
stration, nor analogy, that a stone is not 
sentient in some degree. There never was any 
reason for drawing a line across the universe 
and saying all one one side of the line is matter 
and all on the other side is not matter. All 
phenomena are from one source. 

Let us assume man to be made up of mind, 
body, and spirit, using the old terms. We all 
know what the body is. Spirit we will assume at 
present is the immortal part that has intelli- 



THINKING MATTER. 45 

gence, whether it has substance and body or 
not. Mind is the name for intelligence or con- 
sciousness abstracted from everything else. 
These are three old-fashioned divisions ; but 
two of them, both soul and body, are material, 
and the mind inheres in soul. Spirit is made 
up of mind and soul. 

" The phenomena of human consciousness must be 
regarded as activities of some other form of real being 
than the moving molecules of the brain." — Professor 
Ladd. 

" If there is anything which has been taught to us 
by the most advanced stage of science as applied to 
the anatomy, the physiology and the pathology of the 
brain, it is the fact that the utmost degree of mental 
aberration may exist without there being the slight- 
est change being perceptible to our senses in the nor- 
mal structure of the central organ of the mind." — Dr. 
Win. A. Hammond. 

All this shows a material, soul independent of 
the physiology. The first ''other" thing we 
know to be within the molecules of the brain is 
the nerve fluid . It is a wonderful conclusion 
by Professor Ladd, marking a development of 
theology as well as of psychology. The great 
question is whether our intelligence, which is 
commonly called spirit, is independent of all 
matter, or does intelligence here and hereafter 
inhere in a soul-substance naturally. There 
has been no time in man's organism, from the 
protoplasm to the full grown body, when there 
was not, along with the physical properties, a 



46 MIND IS MATTER. 

soul-force, an inchoate sentient ego. We can- 
not conceive of a '" force" without atomicity or 
materiality. The soul has a force. If it has 
atomicity, it has atomic energy like all matter. 
The postulate that the living spirit is not 
material would carry with it the corollary 
that matter, as we understand it, is a separate, 
inert, dead surplus, that shall at some future 
time, when mind shall have become independent 
of it, be a wastage. God don't waste. If mat- 
ter should becom ? a surplus, where shall it be 
stored ? It cannot be annihilated. It is a fit 
companion of eternal hope. It seems ridiculous 
that matter shall at some time lie off at one 
side, useless, abandoned, while mind is around 
somewhere else enjoying itself. In that case, why 
ever the necessity of matter at all ? If mind 
has within itself all the delusive differentiations 
of matter, why the necessity of the real thing ? 
This kind of stultification is the logical sequence 
of ideology or the ' ' pure spiritism " of the 
soul. There is a prevailing, half-formed idea, 
that in eternity there will be only a sentient 
existence ; that the heavenly spheres and all 
physical forms shall be dispersed, when "the 
elements shall melt with fervent heat and the 
Heavens shall roll together like a scroll." 
Under that ideal doctrine of the soul what 
becomes of matter ? Is it to be laid aside for- 



. THINKING MATTER. 47 

ever in some celestial store-room, in a place off 
by itself, separated from mind and forever use- 
less ? That would be a divine or creative mis- 
feasance, stultification or toying that we can- 
not normally conceive of. Such a purposeless 
act may be fancied, but not believed or compre- 
hended. How shall we finally dispose of mat- 
ter? May not the spheres and "all that in 
them is" be resolved into soul-gas, or the 
" single element " predicated by scientists ? If 
God cannot create matter out of non matter, 
then there is no matter, and what we call mat- 
ter is a delusion . The Creative Intelligence has 
linked mind with matter here ; will He not do 
it there f Or shall the rule arbitrarily cease at 
some distinct period of time, matter be laid off 
one side, and mind become extinguished, leav- 
ing a universe of ashes? Is there any reason 
in the world, or out of the world, why mind 
and matter should be only temporarily asso- 
ciated ? Why this discontinuity ? Why a 
change? The two work well together here; 
why not always ? Is it not more rational to 
make mind and matter one, as matter and 
energy are ? Such a theory fits our instincts 
and natural ways of thinking and feeling, and 
fits our intuitions about creation ; for we can 
easily and naturally imagine that when the 
earth "was without form, and void," attentu- 



48 MIND IS MATTER. 

ated or ultra-atomic matter and mentality 
allied, by their ceaseless activity, condensed or 
broke up or crystallized into little vortici, cells, 
protoplasms, amoebae, or whatever we may 
discover, thus forming species, as worlds, plants 
and meteors are formed from nebular mist or 
gas. 

We cannot reason back to the beginning of 
matter. Probably that knowledge will be 
forever denied to the created mind. But we 
can say that cosmic, formless gas can exist, 
coevally with God's mind, and He can no more 
exist without that body than a man can exist in 
the first instance without a body, or in the last 
instance either. The various forms of physical 
matter may be modes of motion of an original 
and more attenuated substance, but still that 
original substance is matter. The energy that 
animates that substance is not matter ; it is the 
mind of God, per se, inseparable from and of 
that substance. The various forms of matter 
are not productions of mind, but are rather of a 
finer , matter that had no form, through the 
agency of mind. Matter cannot be a produc- 
tion of mind because, as we have before illus- 
trated, all minds, though separated, by time and 
space, see the same objects of matter. The 
source of all we see is from a mind-matter, and 
with that we must stop. 



V 



THINKING MATTER. 49 

" The present universe must have been developed 
out of and will again sink into something older and 
more lasting, which can be nothing else than the 
unseen universe of ether." — Quarterly Review. 
— — "A molecule is a knot or coagulation of ether." — 
Professor J. S. McKay. 

"Science is rapidly lessening the elements in the 
direction of the btlief in but one original material sub- 
stance, whence the step is shorter and easier to the 
spirit which must be held to precede all matter. And 
so long as it is impossible, as is well known, to reach 
the finer forms of matter itself, with man's best 
devices, it becomes about as easy to believe in spirit as 
in such imponderable, intangible matter, especially as 
everybody knows that such finer matter is a million 
times more potent than the grossest kind. The cannon 
shot is as nothing to the lightning, which we are now 
so venturous in using ; the cyclone, or the earthquake 
itself, is a small affair beside the changes of seasons 
and of temperature. And yet we cannot call heat and 
electricity anything but matter, unless on the premise 
! that there is a ruling universal spirit, compared with 
which electricity itself is coarse and temporal." — 
Brooklyn Eagle. 

God has not made two universes, the living 
and the dead. All is one life forever, the 
organic and the inorganic related. Even 
decomposition of the body is progress and liv- 
ing. There is no difference between the ]ife of 
a stone and that of an angel except in degree. 
Genius is only a degree of awakeness. Who 
has ever said there is any difference between 
plant-energy, animal-energy, and mineral- 
energy ? Professor Eoss Eaymond is of the 
opinion that sedimentary rock is of vegetable 
origin. Who has fixed a dividing line between 
the three kingdoms ? 



50 MIND IS MATTER. 

"We can know but little concerning God, yet we 
have every reason to believe the Ineffable One to be 
pure soul, and that He is as a sun emitting countless 
billions of beams and rays every instant, and that each 
. contains myriads of scintillas, every one of which is an 
embryon, or soul-germ, capable of development into 
perfect manhood or womanhood." * * * "The 
body is supposed to contain within itself an electrical 
form just like itself — head, eyes, brains, tongue, arms, 
legs, sex, organs ; that at death this serial form escapes 
the body; that it can die no more, but lives, suffers, 
thinks, enjoys in that other life ; and that it is in all 
respects a human being still. This brief definition is 
as good as one occupying a hundred pages." — J)r. P. 
B. Randolph. 



We believe mind to be matter also because 
we have never discovered it without the pres- 
ence of matter. That is orthodox inductive 
reasoning. We have never seen water without 
hydrogen, therefore hydrogen is essentially 
water and water is essentially hydrogen. 
Wherever cohesion is, there too is matter, and 
therefore cohesion is an essential part of mat- 
ter, as a visible fact, notwithstanding the 
abstractions that the mind may hector itself 
with concerning it. Mind and matter have the 
same natural relations and partake of the same 
unknown essence or cause of being. Of course, 
experience is not matter, but the thing that has 
experience is matter. Happiness and hatred 
are not matter ; they are functions, expressions, 
or qualities of, and allied to matter. There can 
never be either experience, happiness, or hatred 



THINKING MATTER. 51 

by themselves ; there must be some other thing 
which has them. God never existed without 
matter, whether it is real or fancied. Thought 
is not matter, but there cau never be any 
thought but by some real other thiug to do the 
thinking. Seeing and hearing are not matter, 
but the thing that sees and hears is matter — or, 
the seeing and hearing have with them some- 
thing else, which is matter. 

Does the practical world think it has discov- 
ered the ne plus of matter's attributes? We 
would not believe in the commonest of them 
did we not observe them. Among the most 
learned and scientific there is no reasoning 
power, nor knowledge of fact, that could lead 
them to predicate the action of the loadstone 
or gravitation without first perceiving them. 
May we yet discover more attributes of matter ? 
Is consciousness one of them ? Matter does 
everything but speak. It shrinks at the touch; 
it grows ; it is perennially energetic ; it builds 
flowers that we cannot imitate ; it manufactures 
our food ; and, to cap all, in organized bodies it 
speaks. Because some of it is rooted to the 
ground, is mute and non-resistive, does that 
prove it has not sentience ? But what are 
organized bodies ? There the dogmatical so- 
called physicists stop. They don't know as 
much about it as the intuitionists. Behind 



52 MIND IS MATTER. 

nature's veil may not inorganic matter be to 
some degree sentient? What do we really 
know to gainsay it ? 

"Nature is a living organism ; there is an ideal in 
the real, a subject within the object, reason in matter. 
There is a soul in the world. All is pervaded by al;,w 
**v of polar forces." — Schelling. 

All is related — mind, matter, and morals ; all 
is always continuous — here and hereafter ; all 
.is "one stupenduous whole." All the universe 
and all that is in it is inevitably and lawfully 
connected and naturally and inseparably related. 
Morals are of the material universe as much as 
cyclones are. The cause that produces a smile 
is as material as the stream of water that turns 
the mill-wheel, or as the vapor that moves the 
iron engine. Whatever sudden passion swells 
the frame, whatever of will-power drives man 
over obstacles, they are attended by atomic 
change. Even the grace of God is atomic ; it 
is the atoms of the Holy Spirit magnetising 
and commingling with the atoms of our souls, 
entering and suffusing our bodies and minds 
as fresh air purifies a room and gives vigor 
and newness and life in there. This is meant 
not as a moral analogy, but as a literal physical 
fact. 

"It is possible that these higher and almost infinitely 
rapid vibrations may be what are called the higher 



V 



THINKING MATTER. 53 

emotions or passions — like religion, love, hate, — dwell- 
ing in a still more subtle but yet material medium, 
that poets and churches have picturesquely termed the 
heart, conscience, soul." — F. J. Stimson. 

Whether one kind of atom produces hatred and 
another species of atom produces love, and 
whether the same species of atoms in different 
motions or combinations produce or are accom- 
panied by different conditions of mmd, do not 
necessarily attach to our theory, which is that 
the mind has a special etherial substance, that 
is not physiological, which is its organ and 
medium of expression. 

What we call inert matter is matter asleep. 
What is the difference between a sleeping man 
and a tree ? Both are to us helpless and insen- 
sible. Both have life or vitality. And what 
is the difference between the molecular energy 
in the sap of a tree, the cohesion of a mineral, 
and nerve telegraphy ? Matter will awaken in 
some form, even though it has to wait until it 
is transmuted through solar ray, chemical 
change and food, into our bodies and souls. 
Then it awakens. What is now rock will yet 
be a man — soul and body. 

" If potency be the measure of reality, which is the 
more real, the solid shaft of granite or the imponder- 
able lightning which shivers it into fragments ? We 
approach the realm of power as we pass from the 
material to the spiritual. The water grinds the reck, 
the heated air dissipates the water, the electric iniiu- 



54: MIND IS MATTER. 

ence decomposes the air, and the will of man excites 
and directs the electric force. Nature represents 
things spiritual. The seen is the type and symbol of 
the unseen, and that which is seen is temporal, while 
things which are unseen are eternal. Nothing can he 
seen but forms, and these are in their nature transient 
and changeable. The substance of these forms is 
indestructible ; the material passes into spiritual. The 
distinction which separates the seen from the unseen 
is not determined by any supposed differentiation of 
spirit from matter ; I don't know that any distinct line 
dividing the two exists, but if it does exist, I do nc t 
know where it runs ; but the distinction is best defined 
by the words phenomenal and actual, the forms and 
realities. The things which are not seen abide forever. 
Are 3'ou not mistaking realities for shadows, and 
shadows for realities ?" — Dr. Clarke, 

The soul being called material, the next 
question that arises is about the continuity of 
the mind, or immortality of the ego. We see 
the body dissolve and then we see no more 
mind. Does the mind perish with the body, 
like the disconnection of the flame from the 
wick ? The world has had no scientific knowl- 
edge about this, or scarcely an inquiry outside 
of the religious dogma. But men are begin- 
ning to ask, do philosophy and science east 
any knowledge upon our future path ? Do we 
always sow for others to reap ? 

Is there a place of permanence and constancy ? 
Is there any way we can assure ourselves of 
future life without depending wholly upon 
faith? This bundle of memories that some call 
the mind, has it a continuing body after the dis- 



THINKING MATTER. 55 

solution of the physiology ? If so, what is that 
body ? Can it be discovered now ? Is this men- 
tal illumination of itself ; or does it die with the 
6ody, or is it arbitrarily continued, or is it of 
something else that endures? Is this animal 
body a prototype of another body that carries a 
mind along with it by similar methods here- 
after ? If it is, that thing should have a name, 
and we should get hold of it. A spiritual body 
or an electrical body existing, having the atomic 
unit tenacity of all bodies, reinforced by a vol- 
itional tenacity, where is the limit of its contin- 
uity ? Given an imperishable physiology, we 
nave immorality simply from desire to live. 
Our future life is analogous to this life in its 
ambitions, desires, self preservation, and accre- 
tion of substance. 

And why may not sentience occupy this 
electricity or nerve fluid as well as occupy any 
of the dissolvable compounds of the body ? 
What is the peculiarity of any part of the phy- 
sical components of the body that make them 
adapted to mental contact and action ? Why 
must mind be located ? The body has fourteen 
chemical elements. Which of them contains 
the soul ? Or is there yet another element un- 
determined ? Do these fourteen elements, by 
their compounding and friction, gather or man- 
ufacture gradually from the seed, another sub- 



56 MIND IS MATTER. 

stance which may be called the soul, or is that 
soul breathed into man's nostrils after his phy- 
siology is built up at birth, making him a quick- 
ening spirit ? The body from its germ seems to 
be the material vortex for individualizing soul, 
building up ifcs particles. The body and soul are 
mutual products of each other. 

Soul is self. Mind and soul are conscious self. 
Possibly there may be a sleeping soul, as that 
of the idiot, the babe, the adult under coma ; 
but that is not mind. Body and soul are sep- 
arable because body is dissolvable ; but mind 
and soul are not separable because soul is hom- 
ogeneous, ultimate and imperishable atoms. 

Electricity or nerve fluid is the latest discovery 
in physiology. If the mind does not reside in 
electricity, then we will go further in imagina- 
tion and claim that it resides in some similar 
substance still more refined, and possibly the 
product or ultimate of the electric fluid. The 
mechanical dynamo gathers electricity by fric- 
tion. The human body is a dynamo, or gal- 
vanic jar of chemical attrition. The mind must 
have locality ; that gives it all physicial rela- 
tions. 

"Dr. Augustus Waller of the hospital schools bas 
recently made a number of experiments showing that 
it is possible to detect by existing electrical instru- 
ments the electric currents generated at each beat of 
the heari. Two people holding ench other by the 
hand and connected by a capillary electrometer, give 



THINKING MATTER. bi 

evidence of electrical shocks through each other. The 
hands of a single subject, dipped into two basins of 
water in connection with the electrometer, give a 
deflection of the instrument at every beat of the pulse." 
— Philadelphia Press. 

The circulation of the blood is a fricton that 
gathers an electric quantity, which electricity 
reinforces itself from the electricity in the oxy- 
gen that is taken into the blood, through the 
membranes and capillaries about the lung cells. 

"The animal body may be regarded as a galvanic 
engine for the production of mechanical force from 
food and solar rays.'' — Dr. Gregory. 

All matter produces electric currents — the 
winds, the flowing streams, the waves, the dews, 
all chemical action. The mere physiology is life- 
less. A man in full health and power, by the 
loss of a few ounce of blood is dead. His bodv, 
although otherwise perfect, can do him no good, 
make him no mind again. His eye is lustre- 
less, his lips are mute. But when he loses no 
blood his continuity of electric current may be 
shocked out as a light of a lamp is blown out — 
dislocated from its feeding source, and disinte- 
gration follows. There is no lesion or appar- 
ent physical cause for death in an electric shock. 
Is that death the simple displacement of the soul 
by one current of electricity driving out another, 
as the blood is forced out before embalming 2 
Is it the life that makes the friction, or the f ric- 



58 MIND IS MATTER. 

tion that makes the life ? Perhaps, by a full 
infusion of new blood and artificial respiration, 
a new and stranger mind might be engrafted in 
that body. 

In thus associating mind with atomicity, or 
matter finer than atoms, the doubt is still per- 
sistent about domination of matter over mind, 
a theory that we instinctively revolt from. The 
mind of the man dominates the body of the 
man ; so the mind of the atom dominates the 
body of the atom, although inevitably and 
indispensably attached to the atom. Fancy 
separation of attraction from the atom and then 
fancy separation of intelligence from the atom. 
It may be that cohesion makes the atom 
instead of the atom making cohesion, and the 
cohesion may be a relation of intelligence. 

The novel claim of soul- substance will excuse 
iteration to some extent, in paraphase or new 
forms, to get a few of our main assertions clear- 
ly before the mind. Let us further define mind 
as sentience, intellect, thought, feeling, conscious 
experience of another abstraction called soul, 
which is a congeries of atoms ; that this soul is 
within the body and is not the body. When 
the dynamo ceases moving the light is extin- 
guished, but we cannot say the electricity is 
destroyed ; it still remains in the reservoirs of 
nature as a plus quantity of substance. So, 



THINKING MATTER. 59 

when the physiology ceases, soul expression 
ceases, but the soul itself remains in its own 
proper, invisible, ethereal realms. 

There is a physical ego with centre of attrac- 
tion and centre of motion, a polarity, probably 
some sort or degree of sentience in every 
separate particle of matter, and probably a 
limited conscious ego also. S. Duncan, in his 
book on conscious matter, remarks : — 

" Every body, large or small, has its ego, and this 
whether it be organic or inorganic. If the universe is 
an organic whole, there must be an all-comprehensible 
ego. Matter, energy and intelligence are indestruc- 
tible ; they are the three great manifestations of Nature. 
These three great truths explain and supplement each 
other. Give each its due weight in your philosophy 
and you will avoid the extreme of idealism on one side 
and of materialism on the other." ("New Chemistry," 
page 209.)—/. P. Cooke. 

" In matter there is promise of every form of ter- 
restial life." — Tyndall. 

"Soul belongs alike to animals, vegetables and 
minerals." — Spinoza. 

"God is able of these stones to raise up children 
unto Abraham." — John the Baptist. 

" The evolution of Chemistry is towards biolo- 
gy."— {Dr. VanderWeyde). Then it follows that 
it must also be toward psychology, for psychol- 
ogy relates to biology. The term ' ' element " is 
only comparative, describing the degree of 
synthesis that we have attained among the sub- 
stances, and that degree is constantly reducing 
composition to simplicity, reducing the number 



60 MIND IS MATTER. 

of "elements" and pointing by analogy to one 
original substance. It is plain if there were only 
one kind of substance or element it would be 
forever homogeneous and incapable of differen- 
tiation, except by the direct volition of God, as in 
ideas or delusions. But if the atoms of that one 
element contain the sexual principle, like that 
of male and female in biology, the two sexes be- 
come a multiple from which products and differ- 
entiation are unlimited, the two sexes of atoms 
forming the energy of matter. This would 
account for homologus affinities, and energy 
behind the atom, which is " God in all things." 
The atom is the first of lite-principle ; the mole- 
cule is the first of life-organism, springing from 
the fusion of positive and negative atoms. 
Every unit of matter must have a sex, or pre 
ponderance of positive or passive condition. 
;; Male and female created He them." The atom 
is a sexed principle or inchoate sex without 
organization. The molecule is a fuller sexed 
organism, an ego. The fusion of positive and 
negative atoms produces organisms or mole- 
cules. 

The contact of the opposite sexes produces 
within themselves a third quantity and char- 
acter, besides the issue. The love of man and 
woman makes new merits between them, inap- 
preciable to others, gives new life, creates new 



Thinking matter. 61 

emotions and awakens new or other faculties. 
So the sexual fusion of atoms and their cohesive 
energy produced from the sexual law results in 
all the evolution and phenomena of the visi- 
hle Universe. All nature, the inorganic as well 
as the organic, is quivering with the sexual prin- 
cipler. It is a fundamental and universal law. 
All its impulses are automatic and irresistible. 
It needs no cultivation, no art, no volition in 
normal use. 

Faraday remarks: "Another assumption is 
that there are two fluids of electricity, each 
particle of each repelling all particles like itself, 
and attracting all particles of the other kind, 
always." Note the word " particles." 

Are there two kinds of electricity, each sui 
generis and generic, as positive and negative or 
male aud female ; and does not this correspond 
with the male and female atoms ? 



" Mr. Mason Kinne is a quiet gentleman who has 
lived for many years in this city. He is an enthusias- 
tic member of the Microscopical Society, an honorary 
member of several foreign scientific societies, and 
contributes to several scientific journals. He is an 
indefatigable investigator. Some time ago he declared 
he had discovered sexuality in atoms — that is, after 
examining the smallest fragments of inorganic matter, 
iron and other mineral substances, he had discovered 
certain traces that led him to believe that all atoms, 
animal and vegetable, are either male or female, aud 
reproduce their species. The importance of such a 
discovery cannot be estimated. If verified, and if Mr. 
Kinne is confident it can be verified, it means the 



62 MIND IS MATTER. 

revolution of science — a new alphabet for geology, 
chemistry and natural philosophy." — San Fransico 
Call. 

Sexuality is not characteristic of the animal 
and vegetable kingdoms alone. The whole 
world of matter is operating under a sexual 
law. The law of polarization and sexual differ- 
ence applies to every atom ; also a positive and 
negative character applies to one and the other. 
This is what keeps them together. Is this sexual 
cohesion sentient ; and can there be a remote 
explanation here of the influence of the will of 
man over inert, separate, inorganic matter ? 

"The experiments of Medelejeff, Meyer and New- 
lands seem to show that in the ultimate analysis all 
our so-called elements are compounds, and all matter 
- — - is reducible to two forms of atoms." — N. Y. World. 

The principle of two antithetical classes 
applies to atoms and molecules and to every 
material, mental, social and religious condition. 
There are everywhere the strong and the weak, 
the positive and the negative. The same prin- 
ciple in society makes the progressive and con- 
servative, the tory and the whig, the lawless 
and the dutiful, the aggressive and the quiet. 
This sexual energy and affinity of atoms pro- 
duces germs of species as we see crystallization 
commencing in a solution. Some amoebae can 
hardly be seen by the aid of the strongest 



THINKING MATTER. 63 

microscope ; and it is believed there are living 
things that are beyond our discovery, sensibly. 
The amoebae multiply, each out of itself, with- 
out coition of two ; that is, one amoebae will 
be seen to constrict in itself, divide itself in two 
perfect amoebae, and they two do the same and 
so on by geometrical progression. They neither 
copulate nor eat. Perhaps this is the process of 
taking the rib from Adam, the reproduction 
from one as described by Moses. The state- 
ment has been made that the natural multipli- 
cation of amoebae would, if not retarded by 
destructive causes, fill the oceans of the earth 
in twenty-five days. From what would they 
get their food and tissues, unless it is a direct 
conversion of existing atomicity into living 
things which is the "spirit of Grod moving on 
the face of the waters," as in the creation. Are 
not they the direct translation of atoms into 
I o rganisms, or spontaneous generation ? 

"The most powerful microscope "will not discover 
the line between the animal and the vegetable king- 
doms. ' ' — Professor Michelborough. 

From these analogies we reason back to the 
position that this formative soul-stuff is a 
material substance. If this can be established, 
it gives to the reason and heart of man some 
comfortable assurance of immortality, classing 
the soul with the familiar category of persis- 



64 MIND IS MATTER. 

tent forces and substances of the universe. We 
cannot conceive of matter being annihilated. 

The very conception of an ego implies its 
substance of some sort. We cannot conceive 
of an ego of intelligence without segregation 
and location of some kind. We may arbitrarily 
fancy a tree walking, or a man a hundred feet 
tall, but we know there are no such facts. This 
idea of the physical vacuity of the soul is like 
our childish mythology. The consciousness of 
the ego is its consciousness of itself. The 
" itself " implies isolation and something else, 
somewhere else, the alterity of an objective 
Universe, and differences of location in space ; 
and we cannot predicate change of location in 
space but of substance. Your mind is in your 
body, not out of it. So if the mind must have 
location, why may it not have all other sub- 
stantial qualities ? People have said they can 
shut their eyes and imagine themselves in 
space without any physical conditions. But it 
is noticed they say "space." When asked to 
imagine themselves to be without locality or 
somewhere, they cannot perform that mental 
feat. 

If God has made abstract consciousness with- 
out any material form, why has there been 
given to our perception the different forms of 
apparent matter, when delusions would suffice, 



THINKING MATTER. 65 

to match the immaterial soul ? We see the 
necessity of different objective forms in order 
to give the soul a consciousness of itself bj 
comparison and contrast, and we cannot con- 
ceive of forms but of substances or apparent 
substances Are not things what they seem to 
be ? Upon what moral necessity should our 
lives be delusions? Is there any reason why 
blue to one should really be red to another ; and 
why heat to one man should really be cold to 
another ? Differentiated forms of matter seem 
to be objective and abstract to mentality. By 
what perversity do we insist they are not ? 
Why can't we have two things as well as one, 
i. e.j matter and thought, as well as sentience 
alone with its delusions ? 

"The phenomena of human consciousness must be 
regarded as activities of some other form of real being 
than the moving molecules of the brain. * * * This 
real being is the mind. * * * The so-called mental 
faculties are only the modes of the behavior in con- 
sciousness of this real being. * * * The develop- 
ment of mind can only be regarded as the progressive 
manifestation in consciousness of the life of a real 
being which, although taking its start and direction 
from the action of the physical elements of the body, 
proceeds to unfold powers that are sui generis, accord- 
ing to laws of its own." — Professor Ladd. 

" No mental image of a purely spiritual world can 
be formed. * * * The recognition of friends in a 
purely spiritual world is something of which we can 
frame no conception whatever. * * * We have 
. not the faintest shadow of evidence wherewith to make 
it seem probable that Mind can exist except in concep- 
tion with a material body. * * * Our hypothesis 
of the survival of conscious activity apart from 



6Q MIND IS MATTER. 

material conditions is not only utterly unsuppOrtable 
by any evidence that can be gathered from the world 
of which we have experienced, but is utterly and 
hopelessly inconceivable." — John Fluke. 

The natural framework and law of mental 
conception is confined to certain axioms and 
limitations. Our inability to conceive of a soul 
without form or location is related to our ina- 
bility to conceive of non-matter as moving 
matter. Neither can we conceive of the mater- 
iality of a thought which moves the body any 
more than we can call a sense of beauty, of 
gladness, or unhappiness matter. Those mental 
conditions may be necessarily related to matter, 
but we cannot conceive of their being substance 
of themselves. And yet a thought is the 
parent of wonderous physical changes, erecting 
cities, digging mines and tunnels, and linking 
the continents by ships. How does this thought 
come in contact with these material things ? Is 
it by means of a subtle intermediary substance 
between the thought and the body ? But if the 
thought is abstract, what moves the thought ? 
Or, if the thought is necessarily the result of 
matter before it can be a thought, is it put in 
motion by a chain of material antecedents 
reaching back to God ? Are we forced to con- 
clude that either all is matter or all is mind ? 
The will itself is a property of matter by 
nature and creation, and if there is any matter 



THINKING MATTER. 67 

at all, as an abstraction, all its changes are 
through material antecedents linked with mind. 
If mind and matter are abstract from each 
other they could not come together. If they 
are one, as matter and energy are, off they go 
working together as we see them. The energy 
of matter is probably mind. Matter and 
energy cannot exist without one another. We 
do not know which is generic or dominant. 
What reason have we for making either domi- 
nant ? All phenomena observable make mind, 
energy and matter united in creation and action, 
and absolutely one, however we may differen- 
tiate them metaphysically. It has always been 
so ; what reason have we to show it will not 
always be so ? We get into confusion and stul- 
tification when we attempt to unlink them. It 
would be as senseless as to unlink blue and 
indigo, or to unlink sugar and sweetness. If 
we establish either the theory that the will of 
man is from a congeries of living, energized 
and cohering atoms, assuming all substances to 
be atomic and perpetual because joining volition 
and hope to non-resolvable atoms, or the theory 
that matter is only mental expression, then all 
reasoning on mind and body, and on immor- 
tality, becomes harmonious, and we have dis- 
covered the principal law of human nature. 
It is obvious that soul could be just as good and 



68 MIND IS MATTER. 

rational a soul by- being atomic substance — a 
parent of physical matter — which is even finer 
than chemical atomicity and yet matter. 

In the practical benefits in this subject we 
need not discuss free agency, that naturally 
comes up when allying mind with matter. If 
they are so identical that they are inevitably 
related, that discovery is glory enough, because 
our immortality is thereby assured and much 
mystery in social influences and life is explained. 
Possibly the Creative Intelligence could have 
made abstract mind and abstract matter, link- 
ing them arbitrarily and for a time, and with- 
out legal or natural relations, but He has not 
seen fit to do so as far as we can find out, nor 
could we understand it. There is no claim 
here that one is the result of the other. No 
one has ever shown any reason why they 
should be separated. But to say they are 
a mutually dependent pair of phenomena, 
indispensable and inalienable to each other, 
before us, after us, and with us, is true from all 
analogy and ultimate reasoning. 

The phenomena of the butterfly and of the 
tree are illustrations of this tenacity of the ego, 
and of its self-reawakening without special 
volition. Awaking from sleep is a material 
momentum, a reflex action, without conscious 
volition. Science doubtless will yet reveal to 



/ 



THINKING MATTER. 69 

our vision something in the physiology of the 
caterpillar that points to the butterfly. 

So our physiology now must contain some- 
thing that can point us to the soul. Out of 
the imperishable ether we were formed ; back 
into etherial forms we shall be fashioned by our 
• own wills. 



14 Mind allied to matter, unconsciouslessly, indeed, 
but as directed by the nerve energy, combines or dis- 
solves, takes up or rejects the elements which it comes 
in contact with, and thus levies, by its discretive act. 
Now this same power over the chemical affinities of 
the matter may enlarge in another state. If the human 
family is to live anew, their future state of existence 
offers itself as a proper branch of the physiology of 
the species. * * * The brain is the laboratory of 
the vital spirits." — Unzer. 

If we are to live after death, it is from a 
natural law that is now discoverable through 
science. Immortality is an effect or sequence 
of a mortal cause. In following chapters will 
be found abundant phenomena that supplement 
the Gospel as to Immortality, and show that 
soul-force is most important among all forces, 
and has the same laws and methods, though 
modified and occult. Is soul a real and sub- 
stantial thing like the winds and water-courses, 
or electricity, or is it nothing but an idea, a 
conjecture, a title, a right, a floating mere con- 
sciousness without definable personality ? Is it 
thinkable that nothing can think ? If nothing 



70 MIND IS MATTER. 

can think, then when there is no think there is 
nothing left. To sleep or to have any lapse of 
consciousness would be to die. Thinking can- 
not think itself. It must depend on something 
else. A dream cannot dream itself. If the 
mental ego is abstract mentality, then after 
every instance of coma and sleep the revival of 
the ego would in each instance have to depend 
upon the special interference of God. There 
would be no power of mental evolution, nor 
self -continuing, It is more likely that the ego 
once set up runs itself across periods of uncon- 
sciousness by a chain of laws. Nothing is 
nothing and nothing comes of nothing. 

The soul is vitality and sentience united. 
There are not two distinct divisions or kinds of 
life, such as sentience and animal life-principle, 
or separate mortal life and spirit life. There is 
only one life and that is the soul that animates 
the body. There is no " Mechanical vitality." 
The lives of a man, tree, crystal, stream of 
water or stone are all one, differing in degree 
of awakeness. The sentience or perception of 
all those lives, of course, varies in degree infinite 
and beyond our comprehension. The life of 
those inanimate objects is like the life of a man 
in coma or sleep, or in blank idiocy ; it is latent. 
No dogmatic physicist ever displayed any phe- 
nomenon or reason for saying that sentient life 



THINKING MATTER. Tl 

is a different thing from vitality, or, at least, 
not essentially related to it. We have never 
seen mind where there is no vitality. Because 
we do not see mind always where there is vital- 
ity is because there is something the matter 
with our eyes. Pain awakens us out of sleep. 
This shows there is a conscious soul in another 
realm than this objective world. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE COSMIC SUBSTANCE AND MIND. 

The nature and quality of soul-substance — The primordial 
cosmic gas of infinite tenuity is probably the Holy Ghost, 
the condensation of which are the more physical forms — All 
matter is from one element — Faraday, /Spencer, Youmans — 
Atoms the first step of condensation, this condensation is a 
rule of the Infinite Mind to differentiate itself into elements 
and forms — No distinct line between the rock and the angel — 
The ego is only a centralization of a congeries of atoms, the 
same as a physical organism is — Acretion and discretion of 
souls — Magnetic stream is indivisible—The uncertainly and 
diffusion of the ego — The atom a living being — Each species 
is a mental germ in the creative mind — God in Physical 
matter — Dr. Meredith, Dr. Scudder — Attraction is radiant 
matter — Mental continuity is explainable only by atomic 
cohesion — Heredity — Soul defined. 

What is the substance into which all matter, 
inorganic as well as organic, is now said to be 
resolvable and from which all things have been 
developed ? " In the beginning the earth was," 
— but it was " without form, and (was) void" 
and the mind of God cohered the mists to 
nebulosity, and spheres, and the friction made 
Hght. As far back as we are permitted to see 
we find matter to be coeval with God. God is 
matter. Is there a convertibility between the 

12 



THE COSMIC SUBSTANCE AND MIND. ?3 

ether, odic force, electricity, atomic energy, 
gravitation, nerve fluid, vitality ? Are the 
astronomical spheres, and all that in them is, all 
atomic gases, but compressions, condensations 
or sediment, by gravitation of this finer sub- 
stance, this cosmic primordial element ? 

" I have long held an opinion, almost amounting to 
conviction, in common I believe with many other 
lovers of naturyl knowledge, that the various forms 
under which the forces of matter are made manifest, 
have one common origin, or in other words, are so 
directly related and mutually dependent, they are con- 
vertible as it were, one into another, and possess 
equivalent of power in their action." — Faraday. 

" There i3 but one form of matter out of which the 
successively more complex forms of matter are built." 
— Spencer. 

4 'All matter is thus believed to be composed of 
ultimate, imperishable, and impenetrable atoms which 
are endowed with certain determinate properties that 
we can neither alter nor destroy." — Youmans. 

"Without disputing the infinite divisibility of mat- 
ter the chemist merely maintains the firm and immov- 
able foundation of his science when he admits the 
existence of physical ATOMS as a truth entirely 
incontrovertible."— Leibig. 

" A simple elementary atom is truly an immortai 
being." — Balfourd Stewart. 

" The atoms possess always more or less motion due, 
it must be assumed, to a primordial impulse ; and the 
action of an atom as one substance taking various 
forms by combinations unlimited, was enough to 
account for all the phenomena of the world." — Pro- 
fessor T. E. Thorpe. 

Pulverize the atom infinitely, divide it down 
beyond its natural chemical proportion to ulti- 
mate gas, or to the magnetic current, still its 



74 MIND IS MATTER. 

particles would retain their energy, cohesion, 
polarity, and perhaps mentality. There is no 
necessity for describing matter as u a substance 
that has atoms,'' in contradistinction to a finer 
substance that is not atomic. All substance is 
matter — that is, of the same essence, whether 
atomic or not. Nobody knows the size of an 
atom ; they have only relative sizes. Even their 
existence is known only through analogy. So 
that, if we assume the soul to be a substance, 
the next assumption is just as fair that it is an 
atomic substance, but if not atomic, still sub- 
stance. But even if the conjecture were true 
that there is a substance finer than matter that 
has no chemical atoms and is the peculiar 
vehicle of mentality, that would not controvert 
our position that the mind must have a sub- 
stance, and it would be only changing words for 
the same principle. An atom is a crystalization 
of finer matter. If the mind inheres in any 
subtance that is objective to itself, that sub- 
stance could as well be atomic as non-atomic. 
" Non-material substance" has never been 
warranted in reason, and has had its rise onlv 
in early unthinking fancy. Wise men once 
believed the world was flat. Chemical atoms 
are the first step of the Almighty in forming 
physical matter out of non-atomic substance. 
We cannot say there are particles of substance 



THE COSMIC SUBSTANCE AND MIND, 75 

smaller than atoms, because the particles — or 
divisions — would then be atoms ; but there may 
be substance not atomized, finer than atoms. 
Atomicity need not be considered as the 
boundary of physics. Atoms are vortici of 
spirit-matter. But is the soul non-chemical ? 
It has contact and affinity with the body ; it 
is as responsive as anything else to the in- 
fluences of matter, it possesses energy. Are 
we to be precluded from recognizing its sub- 
stantial existence, simply because of the un- 
development of chemistry, or because of our 
own ignorance ? There is a universe beyond our 
chemistry ; there is more in nescience than 
in science. If atoms are formed out of finer 
particles of matter than our chemistry reaches, 
then the power that formed them can unform 
them into the element whence they came and 
still they would be matter, although not in the 
ordinary form of atomic matter. That may be 
soul or spirit substance. It is not necessary, to 
be consistent in this claim of spirit matter, that 
the -spirit should contain the forms of atoms, 
any more than it should be in physical forms. 
The term atom is only a convenience for organ- 
ization and chemical analysis. The principle 
of soul-substance is the same, whether atomic, 
or non-atomic. We have no other convenient 
terms than " matter" and " atoms "for sub- 



76 MIND 13 MATTER. 

stance. If there is- a substance finer than chem 
cal atoms it is energetic, pervasive, and 
suffuses every atom. We cannot tell but that 
it constitutes the energy of the atom and of all 
matter, building it up, or dissipating it, in the 
ever changing round of intergration and disin- 
tegration, it being the potent will of God and 
the way He works, uniting all things with all 
things in kinship, the rock, the angel, and the 
tree. First God and His spirit, then the earth, 
then vegetation, then man, then soul, then God 
again, except those soul-egos that are virile 
enough and happy enough for unit tenacity and 
Immortality. 

The energy of matter, chemical affinity, 
attraction and gravitation, cohesion, magnetism 
and electricity, are the soul, volition and will 
of God, per se, and without metaphor. They 
are the life of all things, they keep the heart in 
motion when we are asleep, on in an unbroken 
chain from the first cause in God's mind, awav 
back, hither through every seed, ovum, embryo, 
foetus to full manhood, on to posterity, to 
angels. 

"I see the Holy Ghost "building up this creation into 
forms of beauty. Every force in this universe existed 
as a definite thought in God's mind." — Dr. E. B. 
Meredith. 

"Some mineral, but not all, becomes vegetable; 
some vegetable, but not all, becomes human ; some 
human, but not all, becomes Divine." — Drummond. 



THE COSMIC SUBSTANCE AND MIND. ffl 

The immortality of the atom is the guaranty 
of the immortality of the soul. Having a nat- 
ural base, being inherent in atomic substance, 
the soul continues its identity at will, and also 
involuntarily, by atomic energy and persisten- 
cy, as the body does, through coma and sleep 
as vegetable seeds do, and the same as ani- 
mal life does. The questions — " How many 
atoms does it take to make an ego ? " "If the 
congeries should be divided, with which half 
would the ego stay ? " and "Would the other 
half of the congeries be dead ? " do not militate 
at all against our position. It takes relatively 
the same number of atoms to make a soul as it 
does a body, more or less, like any other simple 
organism or physical fact. The congeries can- 
not be divided against its will, as we have seen 
magnetic aud electric induction cannot. Noth- 
ing can divide a magnetic stream. This answers 
the third query also. The probability is that 
the soul is like airy other organized being and 
built upon analagous laws. The strength and 
scope of soul depends upon the number, quan- 
tity and quality of atoms, the same as the ani- 
mal body. Perhaps soul may lose or gain par- 
ticles as the body does and thus annihilate itself. 
We do not know at what point exactly the loss 
of vital energy produces physical death. In the 
same way we do not know at what precise 



78 MIND IS MATTER. 

point the loss or separation of soul particles 
might destroy the spirit ego. If one ego loses 
its particles, they will probably accrete with 
other egos, carrying their modicum or propor- 
tion of sentience along with them. There can 
be limited sentience or extended sentience ; in- 
tense sentience or dull sentience. This diffu- 
sion, affinity, and interchange of soul particles 
is like the diffusion and affinity of gases. It is 
asked how can we conceive of will being linked 
t© material atoms % The answer is that we can- 
not conceive it, nor understand it, except as 
illustrated in the animal body. We take our 
mortal life as a starting point and antetype of 
the soul and its evolution. Without the body 
as an analogy we cannot proceed a step in our 
theory. 

That the individual atom has some kind of 
inchoate, limited life is probable. The micro- 
scope is discovering living animals a thousand 
times minuter than any conception we can 
form of an atom. There are animals that will 
take a hundred and sixty thousand, end to end, 
to measure an inch. How do we really know 
every molecule is not an animal ? Is not the 
easiest explanation of the affinity and energy of 
matter that of the life and volition of matter? 

" Does an atom infinitesimally small seem too minute 
to be .the etheral abiding place of a living conscious- 



THE COSMIC SUBSTANCE AND MIND. T9 

ness ? " — Antoinette Brown Blackwell (In the Physi- 
cal Basis of Immortality). 

" Each improvement of the microscope displays new 
races of animals too minute to have been observed 
before, and which would require the heaping together 
of millions upon millions to be visible to the naked 
eye ; and yet each of these is composed of members as 
admirably suited to its mode of life as those of the 
largest species. Their motions display all the phenom- 
ena of vitality, sense and instinct. Nor are their 
actions blind and fortuitous, but evidently governed 
by choice and directed to the end. They have their 
appetites to gratify and their dangers to avoid. They 
possess circulating systems, often highly complex, 
and blood with globules bearing to them by analogy 
the same proportions in size that ours do to us." — Pro- 
fessor Kane. 

"But the discovery and improvement of the micro- 
scope, though giving a death blow to much that had 
been previously written and believed regarding spon- 
taneous generation, brought also into view a world of 
life formed of individuals so minute — so close, as it 
seemed, to the ultimate particles of matter — as to sug- 
gest an easy passage from atoms to organisms." — Tyn- 
dall. 

The " death blow " is not so easily concurred 
in. 

Some orthodox religionists say there can be no 
life commenced unless especially and arbitrarily 
endowed in each individual instance by the will 
of God, or " touched-up " with life from God's 
own life. God could touch up individual 
life away back at the beginning, in the primor- 
dial cause, as well as at the physical birth of 
the individual. It evinces a low degree of intel- 
ligence to imagine mere life -principle to begin 
at sometime in the animal body between con- 



80 MIND IS MATTER. 

ception and birth, between the beginning and 
the end of the foetal life, although that is the 
period of the organization. Life — not ego — 
reaches back to the Creation. It is one contin- 
uous atomic wave, cause and sequence, from 
the first creative idea down through all germs. 
The creative intelligence does not form dead 
clay into an organized body, and then arbitrarily 
light it up with life at an instant as we light- 
one lamp by another. Life is coeval with mat- 
•ter in the protoplasm ; the clay is itself con- 
scious, to a degree, and at its creation. Each 
of us reaches further back than birth, although 
we forget what the atoms composing us knew 
ages ago. Molecular activity is the direct will 
of God, in and of the molecules. In the crea- 
tion, the sentience of the cosmic mist controlled 
the mist and differentiated it into the physical 
universe, with the mental characteristics 
adapted to each part and form. The body 
of a man is essential to the mind of the man ; 
the body of the atom is essential to the mind of 
the atom ; and in the first animal protoplasm 
mind and matter were thus combined. The 
whole universe is persistent and indestructible, 
continuing by its own desire. The mortal state 
of man is the antecedent of his immortal state ; 
and his immortal state is the continuation of 
his mortal state. 



THE COSMIC SUBSTANCE AND MIND. 81 

All forms of matter, organic and inorganic, 
had their germs in the Almighty's mind. It 
was His idea in each special instance^ working 
upon atoms, that formed living things. After 
that, each species produced its own seed. 



" In the day that the Lord God made the earth and 
the heavens, and every plant of the field before it was 
in the earth." — Genesis II. 4, 5. 

" If there is a particle of matter in this universe 
without God, then God is not omnipresent." — Dr. 
Meredith. 



Does the Doctor recognize God as in the 
atoms ? If so, then he recognizes the atom as 
the body of God. Then, as we are in His 
sentient andi mage, our souls also are atomic. 

Attraction and gravitation are the will of 
God, and God is particles of thinking matter. 
A handkerchief is let drop. It and the earth 
join through space. There is a bond between 
them as material as a rope or a chain. What is 
that bond ? It must be a substance of some 
kind. Professor Faraday believes in the ' ' con- 
sistency of gravitation with magnetism." Is 
this substance active diffused matter, ether, 
electricity, that fills all the Universe ; and is it 
a conscious will ? 

As to the continuity of atomic life we feel 
instinctively that we reach back by birthright, 
and will continue on by right of possession. 



82 MIND IS MATTER. 

The continuity of thought and tenacity of the 
ego can be illustrated and translated by chemi- 
cal atomic contact and affinity. An instinct of 
permanence is innate with all living things, and 
is a law of non-sentient things. In our awake 
condition we have Teachings backward and out- 
ward ; and in our dreams vivid and repeated 
pictures of scenes that we have not experienced 
in this sensible life. Are these imaginings, in- 
voluntary pictures, former experiences of soul- 
atoms that have always existed, either free and 
fugitive, or in some former body, of which our 
souls are made up and which are ever indestructi- 
ble? We see this principle in our children in their 
continuation of family character, their expres- 
sion of their ancestry in their first breath, and 
on to the end of their lives. We never look 
upon our children as being wholly of us ; we 
are to some degree a channel through which 
they have come , their characters are not 
wholly original with us, but extend back of us, 
through our ancestry and are taken from the 
infinite. This wave of mental heredity does 
not come in and of the bodily tissues alone ; it 
comes with something finer, but within the 
bodily tissues. If life were " touched up" at | 
birth we could not have these intuitive connec- 
tions with the past nor this heredity of char- 
acter and soul, for life is character. With the 



THE COSMIC SUBSTANCE AND MIND. S3 

atoms of the past our body has added new 
atoms. Endowing inert matter arbitrarily 
with mind is wasted labor, without law or sys- 
tem. God did but one arbitrary act, and that 
was the first. Any subsequent arbitration is 
unnecessary to Him, although possible. We see 
law and system, cause and sequence, in all His 
work, from beginning to end. 

" My substance was not hid from Thee when I was 
made in secret and curiously wrought in the lowest 
parts of the earth : Thine eye did see my substance 
yet being imperfect, and in thy book all my members 
which in continuance were fashioned when yet there 
was none- of them. " — David. 

At the first germ of individual organization, 
the instant of parental coition, there is not at 
that point the first gift of life, but there is of 
organization. As far back as analysis can go 
we find no necessity of divorcement of mind 
from matter. The " touch of life " is not in- 
stant but progressive, evolutional. Body and 
soul grow together from the infinite beginning. 

" Whether of the individual or of the universal, 
Soul is Substance — that which sub-stands all phenom- 
ena. This substance is original protoplasm ; at once 
that which makes and that which becomes. * * * 
Matter is the ultimate expression of substance, in 
dynamic condition. * * * As between spirit and 
matter, so between the organic and inorganic, there is 
no real barrier. * * * The soul, or permanent ele- 
ment in man, is first engendered in the lower forms of 
organic life, from which it makes upward through 



84 MIND IS MATTER. 

plants and animals to man. Its earliest manifestation 
is in the etberial or fluidic material called the astral 
body ; and it is not something added to that body, but 
it is generated in it by the polarization of the elements. 
The process of its generation is gradual. The mag- 
netic forces of innumerable elements are directed and 
focussed to one centre until they create there a cr ystal- 
lization of magnetic force. This is the soul, the astral 
and fluidic body's immediate matrix. The material or 
fixed body put forth by this may fall away and disap- 
pear, but the soul once begotten and made an individual 
is immortal until its own perverse will extinguishes it." 
— " The Perfect Way:' 

The soul of man is the homogenous atomic 
residium preserved by the living will during 
the changes of the crass matter of the body 
that are constantly going on and building up, 
by bodily chemistry and friction, that ultimate 
element, death being not different from other 
changes only in degree ; the entity, individual- 
ity, or cohesion of the spiritual body of atoms 
and the chain of recollections that form the ego 
being preserved by its own will power. 

" The soul," says Dr. H. Stevenson, of this city, " is 
located in the corpus callosum, a little spongy body 
situated at the base of the brain, which has defied the 
efforts of physicians in their endeavors to ascertain its 
uses in the human anatomy. The corpus callosum," 
said the Doctor, "is the seat of the imperishable 
mind, and is the great reservoir and storehouse of elec- 
tricity, which is abstracted from the blood in the 
arteries, and conveyed through the nerve up the spinal 
cord to the corpus callosum." — Philadelphia Enquirer. 

Will moves matter ; will is not matter, but is 
a quality of matter ; matter is moved by itself 



THE COSMIC SUBSTANCE AND MIND. 85 

through one of its own qualities — will, or self- 
energy, as the man moves himself, and as God 
(The Universe) moves Himself. God is not 
abstracted from the Universe. He is the Uni- 
verse. Why not ? He is as good a God in that 
way as an amorphous being on a local throne. 
God's spirit is a chemical element of nature, all 
nature, the original cosmic element. We can 
understand mind and inert matter in the atom 
by pointing to man as an illustration. 

' ' God is to-day that great undistinguishing energy 
which science has just found out. You may call it 
Energy ; I call it God. He is everywhere, a personal- 
ity, a Being of which we can form no conception." — 
Henry Ward Bcecher. 

What we commonly call mind is only that 
part of soul action manifested to our view. 
The soul may have powers of development far 
beyond its manifestation and far beyond our 
knowledge. An idiot may have a soul of 
unlimited scope in his disenthralled realm. The 
limited manifestations that we witness we term 
idiocy or untoward development. What a soul 
is and what it shows to be through an imper- 
fect agent are two different things. The musi- 
cian is more than his instrument ; but we only 
know him through his instrument. When a 
wise man is asleep we do not call him an idiot. 
When a wise man is dying or dead we do not 



S6 MIND IS MATTER, 

call him no man. He is somewhere else. The 
degree of genius in men is only a degree of 
wakefulness, display., or power of manifesta- 
tion, or of sensible contact with their fellows. 
Because we fail to see mental manifestations 
does not argue that mentality is discontinued 
after the power of manifestation has ceased. 
Death is only the paralysis or destruction of 
the organ of expression. Destroying the musi- 
cal instrument does not destroy the musician ; 
destroying the body does not destroy the man. 
The first obcession of Henry Ward Beecher's 
activity was " thickness of speech ; " the mind 
was still alert. The successive palsying of the 
members and final stillness was only gradual 
physical change, not death of mind. The 
power of physical expression only was palzied. 
So far as mental manifestation was concerned 
there was no precise line that could be defined 
between his life and death. 

But what boots it whether the mind be mat- 
ter or not matter ? Mind can be just as good 
mind being one thing as the other. Nothing 
boots it, except when we adopt this theory we 
are out of wandering on the subject ; thinking 
about it becomes natural, analogical and easy ; 
it makes soul a natural, educable science, and 
furnishes the only reasonable hope of a future 
life to those who are not moved by Scriptural 



THE COSMIC SUBSTANCE AND MIND. 87 

revelation. And we find that it matches with 
the common tradition of mankind as expressed 
in the terms " angels, spirits, ghosts," and tends 
to explain magnetic cures, mind- reading, sym- 
pathy, personal magnetism, social automatic 
hypnotic powers, imitations, fashions, fads, 
physics, forces, etc. As to our hopes for im- 
mortality, what we cannot hope through science 
some people deem it not worth while to hope 
for at all. With this philosophy we get a bet- 
ter knowledge of social laws, of natural reli- 
gion, of physical and spiritual relations between 
God and man, and between men, of the resur- 
rection of a body ; have clear sailing in mental 
phenomena and do not violence to normal 
thinking. Whatever a well-ordered and healthy 
mind believes, in the realm of instinct and 
careful reflection, is likely to be true, from the 
mere natural correspondence of mental laws 
with all objectives. " Every great discovery 
has been preceded by a guess." A mother said 
her babe when it died "Looked as if it saw 
something beautiful." The materialists cannot 
prove it did not, with all their talk of 
" reflex molecular impression" and " subjec- 
tivities " of the babe. What had a babe eight 
months old ever seen here to give it the expres- 
sion of seeing an angel % 



88 MIND IS MATTER. 

" The actual discoveries of science render everything 
credible that can be proved to come within the com- 
pass of analogy." — Dr. Isaac Taylor. 

The fact that some conditions of the sen- 
tience, such as passion and enthusiasms, can- 
not exist without corresponding physical con- 
ditions is some proof that this sentience has 
not within itself power of evolving its changes, 
but must depend upon and keep pace with its 
material affinities and material relations. There 
cannot possibly be augmented within the 
abstract sentience itself that degree of cheer, 
courage and energy, in any line of thought, 
action or feeling, that can be by the aid of phy- 
sical stimuli. Abstract mental conditions have 
no power of self -evolution. This single phe- 
nomenon can be dwelt upon with logical profit. 
If mind does not depend upon matter, why has 
not the mind within itself all sources of action 
and reaction ? In short, why would it ever 
tire or change ? 

" I can never be persuaded that the soul lives no 
longer than it dwells in the body, for I see that the 
soul communicates vigor and motion to mortal bodies 
during its continuance in them." — King Cyrus. 

The animal system is the best example of a 
magnet and electric dynamo. From the well 
known laws of producing the magnetic or elec- 
tric current by friction and erosion, the magnet- 



THE COSMIC SUBSTANCE AND MIND. 89 

ism of the animal body was naturally inferred 
from its blood circulation, digesting and breath- 
ing, — a veritable dynamo. The nervous system 
is a simple system of telegraphy, with the brain as 
a storage battery and the stomach and lungs as 
the furnace, or coaling department. This mag- 
netic fluid is proved to be the first aud direct 
agent of the mind ; the mind acts upon it 
through the nerve telegraphy, directly. It is 
in conformity with all dynamics that there 
should be a reaction from the nerve telegraphy 
back upon the mind, and it is by this magnetic 
agent that there is social contact, harmony, 
sympathy, and influence generally among liv- 
ing beings. It is this magnetic agent that 
makes effectual the force of will ; that brings 
persons into mental contact and affinity ; that 
accounts for personal domination, hypnotic 
power, mind reading and all the finer social 
dynamics hitherto unaccounted for. There has 
been a general conjecture that the animal sys- 
tem is magnetic. Take a small piece of steel 
and support it like a mariner's magnetic needle. 
Balance this upon a pivofc, say a darning needle 
stuck into a cork. Then take a bar of common 
wrought iron, grasping the centre with the two 
hands touching each other. If necessary, to 
steady the hands and nerves from tremor while 
performing the very delicate experiment, rest 



90 MIND IS MATTER. 

the hands upon a bottle or goblet to insulate 
the bar, and thus bring the bar level with the 
needle. Now bring the bar, the end of it to lap 
the needle a quarter of an inch, and close to the 
needle as possible without touching it. But 
first lay the bar in that position upon a goblet, 
without contact with the hands, to see that 
there is no possible magnetism either in the bar 
or the needle. After observing for five or ten 
minutes to see that the needle does not approach 
the "bar, although there is scarcely the breadth 
of a hair between them, being in a room with 
no currents of air to create motion, then grasp 
the bar with your two hands and hold it in the 
same position, as close to the needle as possible. 
Here patience will be required. The phenom- 
ena seem very capricious and perplexing ; there 
may be twenty minutes before attraction 
appears, but when it does come it comes sud- 
denly, and then you have a complete magnet. 
The needle will adhere to the bar, and follow it 
around and around. Suddenly the influence 
will stop ; then it will be necessary to reverse 
the pole. Finally that will lose effect. The 
needle seems to have enough and is tired out. 
Different bars apparently alike have different 
powers. The bars will maintain their attractive 
power for days, and the swivels will pick up 
iron filings. The experiments are most satis- 



THE COSMIC SUBSTANCE AND MIND. 01 

factory when the swivel is balanced north and 
south. This may explain why some people 
sleep better lying east and west. Each blood 
corpuscle is a complete iron magnet with mag- 
netic polarity. The magnetic current would be 
more active north and south and thus affect the 
brain. This, of course, would be inappreciable 
to tired or rugged persons ; but upon those who 
are so finely balanced between awakeness and 
sleep as to awaken themselves, it may have an 
effect. For the same reason ill and enfeebled 
persons should lie north and south to increase 
circulation. A bar of iron not magnetized will 
accumulate magnetism by lying north and 
south, or by standing vertically. A steel bar 
charged by the human hands will hold its 
power for weeks. The magnetic quantity acts 
just like any other physical quantity. This 
swivel that is attracted by the hand-magnetic 
bar, will impart its current to a cambric needle 
floating on water. The needle phenomena will 
operate, no matter about the " mental disposi- 
tion, " if there be animal contact. A steel bar, 
round, one half inch by two and a half feet, is 
most convenient and powerful, and holds power 
longer. Several fresh bars and several light 
swivels are necessary for experimentation, to 
assure the experimentor of the entire absence of 
magnetism in the irons before each personal 



92 MIND IS MATTER. 

test. Soft iron bars are most satisfactory, 
because less likely to have latent magnetism 
than steel. This power is precisely like all 
other physical powers, not uncertain nor mys- 
terious, but is most manifest in the most favor- 
able physical circumstances and most ingenious 
manipulation. Persons impart it best in the 
morning ; strong, healthy, positive persons are 
best operators. Several holding the bar are 
better than one. Insulation is not always nec- 
essary, but it is better. But there is an unac- 
countable and perplexing irregularity about the 
results of experiments. 

This magnetism is man's vital force. Its radi- 
ation is the invisible but potent telegraphy that 
reaches from heart to heart. There is no esti- 
mating the reach and subtlety of this magnetic 
agent of the mind. The mind acting on this 
physical agent, and this physical agent reacting 
upon the mind, reaffirms the theory that the 
mind itself is a material power, however 
incomprehensible that may be to us 

Mr. Elwood Cooper, of San Diego, Cal., is 
authority for a statement of a freak of vege- 
table nature precisely like animal instinct, in a 
root going directly sixty feet distant to a 
decayed casing of a wooden sewer, then following 
inside the casing of the sewer until stopped by 
a wall of masonry ; then clambering up the wall 



THE COSMIC SUBSTANCE AND MIND. 93 

three feet to a hole in the wall, and thence 
down again to the sewer, and is following the 
side of the wooden sewer on the far side of the 
wall. Waiving now the question of limited 
sentience in the plant, there was an atomic 
attraction of the moisture, perhaps inconceiv- 
ably subtle, through that hole, but; precisely 
like blind instinct of brutes and men. We think 
these facts show ultimate atomic affinity in the 
instinct of living beings, as they do in the 
attraction in plants, and affinities in minerals. 

We repeat, the chemistry of the body 
secretes, from its beginning as a germ, mole- 
cule or protoplasm, a fine substance similar 
to if not identical with the nerve fluid, 
which, by reason of its being elementary is 
not decomposable, and by reason of its 
subtdlity, it passes through crass matter 
as a current of force from a magnet or 
electric wire passes through a pane of 
glass, and maintains its identity and immor- 
tality by the joined qualities of volition 
and indestructibility ; and that element is 
the soul that thinks and maintains its 

OWN EGO. 



CHAPTEE IV. 

THE ELECTRIC SOUL. 

The nerve fluid and electricity are probably the mental body — 
Electricity is matter and probably the primordial element 
and the body of God— The Pentecostal Flame — God is chem- 
ical law — Social cohesion is magnetism — W. E. Gladstone — 

. God is nature and evolutional — The physical power of mind 
— It probably. stamps inorganic matter into organization — 
The commencement of the individual at parental coition, not 
in spermatozoids — Spontaneous generation from Spirit force 
— Formative energy in the ether all the time existing — No life 
without pre-existing life, but organism can be made without 
pre-existing organisms — We cannot locate a beginning except 
as to species — Bastian, Tyndall. 

"And when the day of Pentecost was fully come 
they were with one accord in one place. And suddenly 
there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing, 
mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they 
were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven 
tongues like that as of fire, and it sat upon each of 
them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost 
and began to speak with other tongues as the spirit 
gave them utterance." — Acts ii., 1-4. 

The Bible, throughout, treats of the soul as 
having dynamic material force, and but little 
different from that of physical phenomena ; 
and to whatever degree it may be reckoned by 
debaters as authority, it carries with it the faith 
of all Hebrews and Christians. If the Holy 
94 



THE ELECTRIC SOUL. 95 

Ghost is a mere ideal consciousness, how can it 
"sound" like the rushing of a wind, or 
" appear " as cloven tongues of fire ? Here was 
the spirit of God directly manifest to the phys- 
ical senses. 

With the following quotation we can concur 
by using thought as of an invisible substance, 
not a substance itself. Then it is real, but not 
as an abstract thought. 

"Your thoughts, your spirit, arid not your body is 
your real self. Your thought is an invisible substance 
as real as air, water or metal, It acts apart from your 
body ; it goes from you to others, far and near ; it does 
this whether you be sleeping or waking. Your mind 
is that amount of thought-substance which has come 
together during countless ages, often using many phy- 
sical bodies. The mind is a magnet. It has the power 
first, of attracting thought and then of sending 
thought ouragaih. Whatever thought you think or 
receive you send from you again, an invisible sub- 
stance to act on others. A thought attracts thought 
of like kind. A thought, be it good or bad, is a thing 
or construction, of unseen element as real as a tree. 
The air is literally full of supposed secrets, Thoughts 
are things. Force is an unseen substance as real as 
anything you see. Each one of us, consciously or 
unconsciously, sends out daily and hourly this silent 
mental force — this invisible element which w r e call 
thought ; it is the same force which may lift a box." — 
Prentice Mulford, Boston. 

Social cohesion is not moral force alone ; it is 
also a mechanical involuntary force, like gravi- 
tation in the earth. Soul-force is the cement of 
society, as attraction is the cement of the phy- 
sical universe, in the same atomic sense. 



96 MIND IS MATTEi:. 

Strike out of matter the power of cohering and 
all will be chaos, " without form, and void." 
It is doubtful if there would remain any matter. 
Strike out of mankind, or society, this magnet- 
ism, leaving men as independent entities, then 
whatever their moral sympathy, teaching, or 
or language is, society would disintegrate^ and 
mankind would vanish. 

An experiment that will bring home to mind 
the idea of the mechanical and involuntary 
association of humanity, presumably by reason 
of this magnetic law, is the following: — Slice a 
small cork into about a dozen thin discs. 
Place upon each about one -fourth of a grain of 
steel filings, magnetized. Take a vessel of 
water, broad enough so that its sides will not 
serve as an attraction, and float a little kero- 
sene oil on that. The kerosene is preferable to 
water because it is not so turgid to the easy 
floating of the cork discs, and because it does 
not serve to conduct away the magnetism. 
Place these discs on the surface, all separate 
from each other at least an inch apart. We 
will then see not only the cosmical process 
forming spheres, but nebulous condensation by 
the steel filings that are dusted upon the water ; 
and we will recognize a similarity in the cork 
discs to the blind and mechanical groupings and 
gregariousness of human beings when they do 



THE ELECTRIC SOUL. 9t 

not exercise the counteracting force of free agen- 
cy and intelligence. First, two of these discs 
will approach each other, then they will take 
up a third. At another part of the plane there 
will be a similar "Cheek by jowl" proceeding. 
The larger and heavier ones will gather the 
smaller ones, and finally they will group in one 
large disc or community. They will roll around 
each other and fit into interstices to get nearest 
the center of attraction, hurrying and huddling 
for recognition. Now, this magnetism being 
found in all animal life, and having a mutual 
interaction with the consciousness, does it not, 
allied to mind, tend to account for much of the 
social phenomena of gregariousness where intel- 
ligence is not used ? Is there not, in our ten- 
dency to congregate, a mechanical as well as 
volitional power? It may be simply bodily 
magnetism that at times draws people together, 
and giving rise to the thought. But we think 
the phenomenon approaches towards our posi- 
tion that the sentience ego of man has a base 
in substance. 

"There is an extraneous force of will which acts 
upon matter in derogation of laws purely physical, or 
alters the balance of those laws among themselves." — 
W. E. Gladstone. 

To this doctrine, that the soul is a conscious 
material substance with a self -continuing 



98 MIND IS MATTER, 

power, there are opposed two classes of people : 
one is the ultra- materialists who believe mental 
action or sentience is only the product of physi- 
cal life or friction, and that with the death of 
the body the mind vanishes, annihilates, leav- 
ing no soul-residinm ; and the other class, 
Berkley, Fitche, Malebranch, Kant, Edwards, 
Carlyle, and the religious sects in general, who 
believe that the soul is simply consciousness — 
an idea — and that at death it continues some- 
where, without body or substance or locality 
by the arbitration of God. But the corporeity 
of the soul is becoming more and more believed 
in by accepted thinkers : — 

"The existence of finite beings unconditioned by 
time and space is inconceivable. The idea of soul 
passing off into space like a puff of empty nothingness, 
without form or substance, without any kind of organ- 
ic function, still existing, but nowhere in particular, is 
about equivalent to annihilation." — Rev. Thomas Clark. 

"Mind is a circumscribed aggregate of activities, 
and the cohesion of these activities, one with another, 
compels the postulation of something of which they are 
the activities." — Spencer. 

His " activities" mean consciousness, and his 
" someteg" must be substance or matter. 

" We possess evidence that there exists an all-per- 
vading something, not to be defined as matter, but 
which may be regarded as the substantial medium of 
' those actions known as light, heat, electricity, gravita- 
tion and magnetism ; that the mind operates on this 
medium in our visible bodies we find in the fact that a 
man, by the mere act of his will in contracting the 
muscles of his arm can cause a current of influence 



THE ELECTRIC SOUL. 99 

which sensibly deflects the needle of the galvanometer. 
Every act of will seems to act through an agency simi- 
lar to that of an electric telegraph. The will being 
capable of moving this agency and being moved 
through it, may we not reasonably imagine it possible 
that the soul is to be forever associated with it in some 
specific and identical form. This agency is probably 
one with the all-penetrating medium of the universe, 
called, for the lack of a name sufficiently definite, 
ether. It is calculated to serve as a spiritual body 
which, taking direction and impression from the soul, 
might be capable of influence and action in sympathy 
with all the changes of mental and physical of the uni- 
verse." — Dr. George Moore. 

Electric or ether atoms are life and soul filling 
the universe. They are diffused matter. They 
are in the air, all matter, the sea, and the earth, 
the flames, everything. They are the food of 
life, or of organisms. They are also the uni- 
versal flood that deflects the magnetic needle 
and that cleaves the oak, the rock and the sky 
as lightning. All matter is reducible to electric 
atoms. Attraction is emanation of matter, 
particles of the substance set free from the 
main body, like evaporation or emanations of 
scent. Attraction is substance, per se. 

"Electricity, I have no longer a doubt, is the vital 
principle. Life is nothing more or less than electricity, 
and I believe that within five years all men will 
acknowledge this to be the fact. After studying all 
theories I have come to that conclusion." — James Bell, 
Brooklyn. 

By vivisection we have mechanically demon- 
strated — beheld with our eyes — that electricity 



100 MIND IS MATTER. 

and nerve fluid are the same, and we have seen 
the current from the battery stimulate secre- 
tions in living glands. What phenomenon is 
better fit to be called the living God than elec- 
tricity ? God cannot be with us or about us in 
any way except as a substance ; and God's sup- 
posed ways of government, power, presence, 
are in all respects like the qualities of electricity, 
as the white light in the burning bush, in Jesus' 
tomb, in Elijah's fire at the altar, in the stream 
from the clouds, in Saul's light, in the thunder- 
bolt, and the pentecostal flame. 

" For all practical purposes we may treat electricity 
as if it were a material, incompressible fluid, which, 
when in motion, produces certain effects which we can 
observe. " — Faraday. 

Magnetism and electricity are one. The 
stream of magnetism through air will deflect a 
flame and produce heat by its friction to a point 
of melting metals. Dr. Mortimore has written 
a book to prove that electricity literally is God. 
He makes this expression : — 

" When we come to investigate the agency of spirit, 
we find that it is fire, a principle or agent that per- 
vades all nature, one which is indestructible. God's 
spirit is the source of light." 

"There is evidence that light is a distinct force; that 
this force is creative on matter sensitive to it. May 
we not, without destroying the conscience inculcated 
by our respective religious creeds, accept the old 
teaching and comprehend that God is Light. The 
postulate is simple, God is light and light is life." — 
H. P. Malet, in Sunlight and Cosmic Matter, 



THE ELECTRIC SOUL. 101 

We know how frequently in the Bible the 
Holy Ghost and angels are spoken of as " light- 
ning," or "fire," or " white light." In the 
French translation this light is always eclair e — 
lightning. 

"God is a shape of pure electric radience. He 
caused the earth to be inhabited and dominated by 
beings composed of earth's component parts, animai, 
vegetable and mineral, giving them their superiority 
by placing within them His likeness, in the form of 
an electric flame or germ of spiritual existence com- 
bined with its companion working-force of will- 
power. In Christ was an embodied Electric Spirit. 
From first to last His career was attended by electric 
phenomena." — " The Romance of Two Worlds," by 
Marie Corelli. 

" The Spirit of God is the Holy Ghost, and the Holy 
Ghost fills the whole world. There is no place where 
He is not, because, being God, He is boundless and 
omnipresent. " — Cardinal Manning. 

Does the Cardinal mean that the "idea" of 
God fills the world? How can an idea "fill' 7 
anything, or have any space or locality except 
as allied to matter ? 

" You think as men become better acquainted with 
the nature of electricity they will call it the vital prin- 
ciple ? 

A. I do. 

Why, then, if that be the case, would it not be pos- 
sible by the infusion of electricity into a dead body to 
restore life ? 

A. Because I do not think it would be possible to 
restore to its normal condition a machine which is, if 
not wholly, at least in some parts worn out/' — James 
Bell, Brooklyn. 

The interrogator here does not define his 
meaning of " life," One life — that ordinarily 



102 MIND IS MATTER. 

spoken of as the human life — is a bundle of 
experiences. The dead body is simply a body 
with those experiences shocked out of it, too 
broken to be usable again by the will, and 
whither the will goes we know not. The infus- 
ion of an unimpaired dead body with new elec- 
tricity would not infuse it with the old expe- 
rience, which is called "life," "mind," "ego ; " 
but we have no precedent in fact, nor reason in 
science, to declare that an unimpaired human 
anatomy, without lesion, with the identity of 
sentience completely disrupted from the nerve 
center, meaning death, may not receive a new 
life by electricity, the life of an idiot, a new- 
born infant, a new ego, or foetus, but not bring 
back the old memory or mental ego. New par- 
ticles of electricity could not be expected tc 
cause a sudden infusion of the same recollec- 
tions and mental illumination that has made 
the former life or consciousness. If the mem- 
ory resides in particles of electricity it is an ego 
that cannot be duplicated, a self -built affair, an 
identity, a sentient history, the identity of 
which cannot be substituted by new electricity, 
although electricity be life of itself without 
experience — raw life. The mind or soul that 
has left the body was an ego, built up from the 
first ego germ ; but the restoration of a mere 
new animal or physiological life would not be 



THE ELECTRIC SOUL. 103 

the same ego. Electricity might start a new 
soul in the old body, like a graft upon a tree, 
but it would be the soul of a protoplasm. Death 
by electricity is simply a displacement or 
unlinking of the soul from the body, and for 
aught we know a new simple soul may be com- 
menced in a fresh healthy body that has been 
deprived of life by shock, if such shock could 
be made without causing molecular lesion, by 
the proper union of electric current, artificial 
respiration, and forced digestion, that would 
have to be educated, as we all are, from birth. 
Possibly by that treatment the old soul might 
re-inhabit, as in Christ's miracles. Autopsies of 
bodies killed by electric shock sometimes show 
no lesion nor visible cause of death. 

The foundation or starting point for the 
fallacy that the Universe is a dualism of spirit 
and abstract inert matter, is as difficult to trace 
as many other foundationless superstitions. 
There is no warrant for it but in and from the 
intangibility of the subject. 

" The conception of matter as dead or inert, belongs 
to an order of thought that modern knowledge has 
entirely outgrown. What we shall call material Uni- 
verse is simply an imperfect picture in our mind of a 
real Universe of mind stuff '." — Professor John Fiske. 

It is not necessary in adopting this theory of 
soul-matter to inquire the shape and size of the 
mind, if it be material, any more than it is to 



104 MIND IS MATTER. 

inquire the size and shape of God. An atom 
has length, breadth and thickness, but who can 
define that length, breadth and thickness ? The 
same of soul. But why may it not take shape 
as the body takes shape ? One alternate would 
be no more miraculous than the other. If soul 
is a substance, w r hat is to hinder it having form 
any more than our body has a form ? Spiritual 
forms and features would be no more unnatural 
than physical forms and features. The cause of 
form is one of the unknowables. 

In respect of this atomization and material- 
ization of God it is no sentiment of sacrilege 
that we inquire whether the common expression 
of theologians that God is "all- wise," " Omnipo- 
tent " and " all- Perfect," are not hyperboles, 
asserted only from our own comparative devel- 
opment. God is all these qualities in compari 
son to us, because infinitely superior to us. He 
is the highest intelligence in the order of evolu- 
tion. But being Nature itself, not outside of 
nature, does he not partake of nature's progres- 
siveness, always superlative and yet to become 
omnipotent and omniscient ? And does this 
not account for the permission of sin, error, suf- 
fering, injustice, weeds, vermin, endemic dis- 
eases, and the existence of a personal devil? 
This is a practical, rational and tangible concep- 
tion of God. He is worshipful because super- 



THE ELECTRIC SOUL. 105 

lative. Is He perfect because superlative ? This 
materialization of God's spirit makes intelli- 
gible to us the ways of His workings. His con- 
tact with man's soul, His miracles, special 
providences, His energizing of vegetation and 
spirit in all things ; and it gives us a basis of 
natural religion. We can form no conception 
of those terms u omnipotence " and "omnis- 
cience," and therefore it is futile, fallacious 
and inconclusive to use them. He is All-wise, 
All-powerful, All -perfect, as the Universe is. 
We can realize Him as a person as well a prin- 
ciple or element. If He must work by law He 
is subject to law, or is the law. The imperfec- 
tions of nature, the suffering of humanity, the 
unavenged, irremediable wrongs, the institute 
of animal food, all argue an evolutional God. 
We have usually expected and asked too much 
of God that is unreasonable. 

" God cannot create a man ; he can create a world, a 
tree, but not a man. Man is of God, his child, his 
inevitable product." — Dr. R. R. Meredith. 

As a further illustration of physical soul- 
power there are certainly facts and analogies to 
give favor to the theory that sex and organiza- 
tion are formed by nerve shock, or mental 
force, at the instant of coition, instead of by the 
ridiculous monstrosity of a seminal ''animal- 
cule " as the beginning of an individual, each 



106 MIND IS MATTER. 

of which would need to have parents and a pre- 
existing sex ; and from the number present in 
an ordinary coitional function 'millions" of 
them would be presented eligible to ovarian 
adoption, instead of the blind, mechanical and 
miraculous selection of only one. Of course, we 
cannot comprehend nor gainsay the minuteness 
of nature's operations, nor the principle of the 
selection or survival of the fittest. But all 
instinct and analogy make a man loathe to 
believe that he is the development, progress, 
and continuation of a minute eel. The presence 
of trichinae resemblances in the fecundating 
secretion is not a proof that they are the germs 
or cells of humanity. If they are, where were 
they born ? Who were their fathers and 
mothers ? They would have sex and be ani- 
mals. They would make us fathers the 
mothers also, and the woman only a mere pot 
of earth for this animal to develop in. But 
the woman contributes character and heredity 
to her progeny. She and her family continue 
their own race. The presence of spermatozoids 
may illustrate the virility of the seminal fluid, 
by their being an inchoate, active, animal 
form ; but they do not, by an} 7 test or proof or 
analogy show they are the predecessor or begin- 
ning of the animal. The granules that are 
present may as probably, be the fecundating 



THE ELECTRIC SOUL. 107 

power, struck into ego-life and beginning, or 
organism, by the intense mental concept of the 
act. The beginning may as well be there, that 
being the intensest moment of animal exist- 
ence, as at some unknown time in the glands 
of the male. If the spermatozoids are ani- 
mals with life, the beginning of men, they 
must be well on in development, all animal 
qualities of an ego and functions of a race of 
beings, and are cases of spontaneous generation. 
That would require a gensis there, in their 
habitat, and a family history and heredity away 
back indefinitely and infinitely. The doctors 
have discovered no such thing ? They begin 
abruptly with claiming a sort of spontaneous 
and miraculous generation of an animal within 
the testes of the male alone. Well-proved 
phenomena of brute-breeding show the power 
of sexual endowment in a parent to cast sex in 
the progeny. The female concept dominating 
over the male is of course a male image and a 
male issue is the result. The male concept at 
the instant of coition, if stronger, is of course a 
female image, and a female issue is the result. 
Even if there is artificial impregnation during 
coma, there may be a dream or mental act. 
There can be no animal without sex. Probably 
conception with no mental act would produce 
an idiot. What would be the sex of the sper- 



108 MIND IS MATTER. 

matozoid? Are there male' and female spermato- 
zoids 1 If so, they would copulate and produce 
their species in the testes ? Under provided 
conditions they create sex, but do they them- 
selves have sex? If the spermatozoids are 
unsexed, unorganized vital principle, stamped 
into organization ego and sex at the instant of 
coition, then we have no objection to their being 
called cells, seeds or the beginnings of men, but 
not organizations. But our point is, that the 
physical stamp by the mind upon life-principle 
is the beginning of organization. And this is 
another proof of the physical impressment and 
character of mind. 

" The movements of the spermatozoid have no 
analogy with a voluntary act. Its motion is not even 
a proof of its animal origin." — Dalton's Physiology. 

There can be no life imparted without life ; 
no mind imparted but by mind. Mind and life 
united make body. Fecundation is a mental 
act. A seed is not an organization ; a vegetable 
seed requires the womb of mother earth — or of 
oxygen and electricity— to enlarge the seed into 
organization. The seed of an animal requires 
union with the female elements, which gather 
oxygen and electricity for it to make it an 
organism, a living creature. That is a mental 
act, and there can be no life until that sexual 
mental union. There can be no life without 



THE ELECTRIC SOUL. 109 

pre-existing life, because all is life and there is 
no death anywhere. But we hold there is now 
organization, de novo, without pre-existing or- 
ganization. How was it in the beginning ? Did 
not God organize, make organisms, in the sim- 
plest or protoplasmic form, without pre-existing 
organism ? What is the difference between then 
now ? Has law changed ? There is only one 
general life ; that is God's. Out of that we 
are all pieced. We are not to be concluded by 
the experiments of either Bastian or Tyndall in 
the question of spontaneous generation. Nature 
is a larger laboratory than either one of theirs ; 
and there is vitality in more things than hay 
tea. This great question, evolving all there is 
of nature and eternity, need not be concluded 
forever by the manipulative skill and narrow 
opportunities of only two men. Heat may be 
a disorganizer, but it cannot destroy life. Fire 
will dissolve molecules but it will not destroy 
atoms. Life exists independently of organism 
and may at any time form an organism out of 
unorganized matter. There is no discontinuity 
between all things, no impassable boundary. 
They all merge into the body and soul of God. 
All is connected cause and effect. 

The semblant vegetation formed by frost is 
not without its lesson to us of the immediate 
bodily presence everywhere of the Creative 



110 MIND IS MATTER. 

Mind and His continuing formative process all 
the time in spontaneous generation. And 
crystallization carries with it a visible picture 
or illustration of the spontaneous generation 
of species. On the lantern screen we witness 
a magnified glass jar of solution which is fluidic, 
homogeneous, without forms, granules, specks, 
or vortici. But suddenly we witness a little 
point of accretion and then see a crystal shoot 
otit, distinctly exhibiting its motion and pro- 
gress. Quickly these form with the brilliancy 
of pyrotechnics until the whole solution has 
become a solid crystalline mass fixed forever. 
It has its peculiar and lawful forms and features 
without pre-existing forms. Its characteristic 
shapes are spontaneously generated from that 
unknown formative law in atomic energy that 
forms things in the first instance without seed 
or pre-existing kinds. So in the sudden conge- 
lation of moisture upon the window pane or 
smooth flag-stone, where all forms of vegetation 
shoot out from homogeneous moisture without 
pre-existing forms. Thus we see that the 
formative process is still alive and inherent in 
nature, in the atoms. Although the crystals 
and congelations have no seed and cannot 
reproduce themselves, yet they have a degree of 
individuality, for all we know, in their dissolu- 
tion and individual resurrection by other forma- 



THE ELECTRIC SOUL. Ill 

tive process in the energy of the same particles 
of matter. Do not the crystals and the con- 
gealed vegetable forms give us some analogy of 
the present formation of the myriad vegetable 
forms of bacteria ? In this microscopic detection 
of bacteria we have not discovered their origin ; 
their minuteness extends by analogy beyond the 
power of the microscope, possibly down to the 
size of the ultimate atom- Now, may not this 
atomic formative energy that we see in crystal- 
lization form, de novo } actual minute vegetable 
organisms in the bacteria and from them evolve 
all the higher flard. Can the microscope dis- 
cover anything about the bacteria that indi- 
cates their first introduction. Or are we left 
to conjecture their spontaneous generation out 
of homogeneous and germless matter. And 
then, by analogy, if bacteria may germinate 
spontaneously, so may animal organization ger- 
minate spontaneously, as in the amoebae and 
minutest cells from which "'may be evolved all 
the forms of animal life. And thus may not 
creation be going on all the time, "the begin- 
ning " of Moses meaning simply the beginning 
of each species. Positive and negative atoms, 
by their sexual energy and affinity, are all the 
time springing organisms into existence. The 
beginning is now, as it has always been. Neither 
philosophy, tradition, nor science can locate or 



113 IS MATTES. 

confine the beginning. TTe cannot conceive of 
a beginning, neither at what point it is, nor 

how long it takes to make a beginning. For 
all we know it may as well be now as at any 
other time. The beginning mentioned by Moses 
means the beginning of species. Atomic sex- 
uality is the ebb and flow, the action and re- 
action of the unr organic and inorganic, 
in the plants, the animals and the minerals. 
It is the life and soul of the universe. This 
sexual energy is mechanical in minerals, less 
so in the lower animals, automatic in the 
higher brutes, and by degrees volitional and 
intelligent in humanity. It is the active sen- 
tient will of God, and without that law, as 
universal as gravitation or the tides, life on the 
earth would cease, and also the earth itself. 
There can be no earth without life. By this 
raal energy of matter creation is still going 
on. New ephemera are brought into existence 
now as ever and perhaps expiring forever. The 
genesis is not over yet. Every electric shock, 
perhaps, strikes into and out from being, 
organisms and species : and every summer's 
heat breeds them anew for every winter's cold 
to kill them. There is no reason offered against 
the spontaneous generation of bacteria, bacilli, 
or amoebae now. as there was one time a great 
while ago. Many people are satisfied that there 



/ 



THE ELECTRIC SOUL. 113 

is no spontaneous generation now because they 
cannot see it done, and because the Bible said it 
was all done in the "beginning." That term 
" beginning " in the Bible is not defined chrono- 
logically. Why does not the " beginning " in 
the Bible mean the beginning of the particular 
species? We cannot form any conception of 
the term as applied to abstract time. How 
long does a beginning take, an instant or a 
week ? Why cannot the chemical action of 
the sun, oxygen and earth, crystalize or con- 
dense, cle novo, life principle or spirit-substance 
into little foci, as organisms now as ever ? The 
alleged bacteria of the disease u the grip " could 
not have been spread around the world by infec- 
tion, because it appeared in both hemispheres 
at the same time, in advance of any possible 
air current. It is more natural to presume 
those bacteria, if there are any, were sponta- 
neously generated from magnetic causes, than 
that " germs " had "lain dormant," requiring 
only "peculiar climate influences to revive 
them," convenient phrases used by physicists ( 
to beg the question when their reach is short. 
\ The weakness of that disease is a symptom of 
loss of electricity 



X 



114 MIND IS MATTER. 

[April 5, '91, Dr. Carl Seiler contributes ail 
article to the N. Y. World — one year after the 
above was placed in this manuscript — stating, 
" this epidemic is a disease of the nervous sys- 
tem, primarily, * * * it appeared simultaneously 
at Maine and Texas, and Florida and Washing- 
ton Territory, careful investigation has failed 
absolutely to discover any specific germ or 
micro organism as the cause."] 



Spontaneous generation must have been at 
one time, that is, organized forms were made 
out of unorganized soul-matter. It is an open 
question whether the conditions exist now for 
that process as they have at some time in the 
past. Whether they do or not, the principle 
and law is eternal of the formation of organ- 
isms out of the diffused unorganized soul mist. 
That Professor Tyndall could not germinate 
bacteria nor amoebae within hermetically sealed 
flasks, is only a negative degree of proof, only 
a mere offset to Professor Bastian ; it is by no 
means a demonstration that the untrammelled 
and unconfined spaces of nature may not be 
germinating these germs. 

"It is important to observe, too, that the very nature 
of the experiments seems to suggest a doubt as to 



THE ELECTRIC SOUL. 115 

whether it is at all likely that there should ever be 
perfect!}' - reproduced in a test tube, the entire complex 
of conditions precedent to the transition of inorganic 
into organic matter, even though such conditions 
actually exist in nature as a whole. Until man can 
manipulate nature as a whole in his experiments, he 
can never be -justified in making empirically grounded 
assertions as to what is impossible in nature as a 
whole." — {Name forgotten.) 

All comes from the pre-existing life of God. 
We are only pieces or bits of the eternal first 
element, which is animated by intelligence. 
All along through the history of mankind, ever 
since they have done any thinking, their intui- 
tions and common sense have adopted the theory 
of continuous generation. An instantaneous 
beginning is incomprehensible and unscientific. 
The inertia of matter would not allow a six-foot 
man or a twenty-foot elephant to be put up in 
an instant. If creation has taken moi-e than 
an instant, where is the limit of time for the 
process ? It may take millions of years. Of 
course, life cannot come from not -life ; but 
organization can come from non- organization. 

But in these occult subjects we are by no 
means concluded by the ipse dixit of the self- 
styled physicists and scientists. They have 
their vanity, dogmatism and mendacity like 
other mortal So Many of them have not the 
faculty of speculation, the fine inductive genius 
to make use of their facts after better men have 



116 MIND IS MATTER. 

equipped them with facts. Indeed, there has 
come up a sort of reaction or fad against intui- 
tions among a sort of a school of demi-physi- 
cists, aping a stalwart Baconianism. Facts are 
great things, indispensable, but without the 
mental genius of analogy applied to them they 
are as dead as dust. " Instinct is a great mat- 
ter, Hal." (Shakespeare.) Facts are the body of 
science ; speculation is their animating sou]. 

"But I am not sure," continued the Professor, " that 
tuberculosis lias a microbe origiD. For my part. I 
consider that phthisis is of -a human origin. In other 
words, that we produce in ourselves not only tlie 
tubercule, but the bacillus of Koch. It comes from 
within and not from without." — Professor Michel Peter 
(Paris). 

This is spontaneous generation. The Bastian 
school believed, from their careful experiments, 
in spontaneous generation. The Tyndall school, 
from the very same experiments more perfected, 
believe in "life only from pre-existing life." 
Without expecting the latter to overcome their 
Ptolmyism by asking them to time or locate 
"beginning," we may call attention to the fact 
that the Tyndalists, or believers in biogenesis, 
by sterilizing all the elements by fire, did not 
give the gormless elements a natural process 
and favor. There may be life principle or dif- 
fused vitality without organization or seed. 
In burning the air and hay tea, not only the 



THE ELECTRIC SOUL. 117 

organism may be disorganized, the seeds 
destroyed, but the unorganized life-principle 
and its formative power may be also deterio- 
rated or destroyed by interference with some 
occult law. Tyndal's experiments of destroy- 
ing germs by heat only set up a negative, i. e., 
that germs or seeds are destroyed, not life 
principle ; and because no life re-appears there- 
fore there is no reproduction of the individ- 
uals that have existed in the apparatus of 
experiment. The more satisfactory experiment 
would be to first de-seed (not sterilize) and leave 
the air, water, earth, electric influences, and 
simple elements fresh, natural, and free. Fire 
may do more mischief than to destroy germs. 
The elements of the sun's rays, air, w^ater, and 
earth, need a chance in fair combination with 
each other, and affected by electric and spirit 
influences without seeds, to produce organisms 
spontaneously ; not to be shut up in a glass 
cylinder. Until some manipulative means to 
do that and to remove seeds is discovered, the 
experiments will not be entirely conclusive. 
The same laws and conditions of nature always 
existing, make always the same effects. If God 
reigns now, and the principles of the Universe 
are not changed, He is creating now. The only 
difference between biogenesists and abiogen- 
esists is that the former refer the beginning 



118 MIND IS MATTER. 

way back, and the latter say the beginning is 
going on now and all the time. An objection 
raised is that " We are not discovering any new 
species/*' We are not discovering many things 
that doubtless are. We cannot date the begin- 
ning of any species. Give us time, millions of 
years. Biogenesis may suit clumsy powers, and 
be an excuse for ignorance, but it does not tally 
with the analytical and intuitive instinct that 
makes so many discoveries and puts life into 
fhe dry bones of " physicists." Is not the ulti- 
mate atom the "Life-principle" that all are 
seeking ? 

" But if the vital principle, or Soul, beside vivifying 
a body, has an independent existence, life and action 
of its own, if it has subsistence of itself, intrinsically 
not derived from the body or dependent on it, if it be 
a distinct substance, the mere fact that it ceases to 
vivify a body does not deprive it of its own inherent 
subsistence, life, force and action. Its condition is 
changed but it cannot become extinct, except by a 
direct annihilation. If the first element of the bodies 
and forces are indestructible, much more are spiritual 
substances and their forces, which are nobler and have 
much more being. * * * The human soul is a 
substance, simple, indivisible, immaterial, spiritual, 
having subsistence and life in itself." — Rev. J. T. 
Hecker. 

It is probable that Mr. Hecker uses the word 
"Immaterial" in a comparative or atomic 
sense. How can substance be immaterial ? 



CHAPTER V. 

SOCIAL FORCES. 

Hypnotism, its personal and social power — Charcot, Bernheim* 
Donato — Hypnotism against individuality — God is the energy 
of matter — H. W. Beecher — The hypnotic philosophy com- 
prised nearly all of social law and conduct — The fluidic and 
suggestive theories of hypnotism — Mental magnetism. 

Many say that the cause of the influence of 
one mind over another is wholly within the 
mind of the person influenced, or, as it is called, 
" subjective." Others take the ground that 
when one influences another something like a 
magnetic current goes out and bears down the 
mind of the person influenced ; this is called 
"objective power," because it is outside of the 
person who is influenced. This was Mesmer's 
theory. The new T school of ' ' suggestive ' ' 
hypnotism, notably led by Dr. Bernheim, Pro- 
fessor Donato, Professor Charcot, and others, 
says that there is no outgoing stream of fluid, 
but that when one person hynoptizes or brings 
under his influence another it is simply that 
other respecting and acting upon, of Irs own 



120 MIND IS MATTER. 

accord, or automatically., a suggestion made b} 7 
the person who influences him. This sugges- 
tive school denies the materiality of the soul, or 
sentient ego. And from that false beginning 
they blunder on in the dark, begging the ques- 
tion at every step, assuming that cannot be 
which they cannot demonstrate to be. If they 
take the ground that the will is simple abstract 
sentience, pure consciousness, then they must 
give up those figures of speech, force of will, 
will power, moral magnetism, and such like, as 
mere figures of speech, unscientific and mis- 
leading. There can be no " force " or " power " 
or " magnetism" without atomic impact or 
molecular contact. Bernheim, Charcot and 
Donato have given us veritable phenomena (for 
which thanks), but they have given us no 
philosophy. 

Will- " power" and u force" of will are mis- 
nomers, unless will is atomic force. If it is not 
atomic force, then the force would be only a 
moral force of determination. Well, a man 
might " determine " against another until he 
was black in the face, or he might have a phe- 
nomenal " continuity of purpose," it wxmld be 
as ineffectual as a moonbeam unless he eman- 
ated a material power. 

Dr. Joshua Thorne, of Kansas City, a suc- 
cessful practitioner of creative hypnotism, 



SOCIAL FORCES. 121 

remarks : "In operating with this dynamic 
power you enter the temple of the Most High." 
If suggestion only be necessary, that could be 
made by epistle or by a weak-minded person. 
Neither Bernheim nor Donato have ever shown 
an instance when simple suggestion has worked 
any effect without bodily proximity of the 
operator to his subject ; and this fact just as 
reasonably proves the fluidic theory as the sug- 
gestive theory. In his half -thousand octavo 
pages Bernheim gives therapeutic cures in the 
hospitals, principally upon passive and ignorant 
subjects. He nowhere even attempts to prove 
that there is no emanative wave substance akin 
to magnetism. Was it suggestion and imagina- 
tion that Christ cured by, or by an emanative 
virtue that passed out of Him ? Dr. Bernheim 
and Professor Donato give us nothing new ; 
and before denouncing the fluidic theory they 
should make some demonstrative, a priori 
proof against it. Here is a specimen of Bern- 
heim's reasoning (page 188): 

" Common people, soldiers, artisans, those who are 
accustomed to passive obedience and those who have 
docile dispositions have seemed to me the quickest to 
receive suggestion." 

They are the class who would most naturally 
yield to an emanative physical fluid or force. 
His remark that no one can be hypnotized 



X 



122 MIND IS MATTER. 

against his will is gratuitous. We all know of 
personal thralldom to a stronger will and of 
intellectual and volitional paralysis under the 
domineering of another person. The same 
suggestion has a different effect upon different 
subjects. Bernheim and Donato could not see 
the fluidic force ; therefore they argue there is 
none. We might as well argue, that because 
we cannot see into the inside of their subjects 
therefore they are deceiving the , operators. 
Bernheim says that with some he has to 
ie repeat "and " lay more stress" on what he 
says. How is that when the suggestion is the 
same? A command from a. stranger by, letter 
is less effective than a command from the 
stranger by oral presence. If one in hypnotized 
sleep awakes on command, then, obviously, the 
mind does not receive the suggestion intellec- 
tually, because there is no mind.- More 
obviously a force has penetrated to the seat of 
the mind and awakened it. He speaks of the 
difficulty of hypnotizing " refractory persons" ; 
and all through his essay the law of force is 
illustrated in his repeated efforts to hypnotize 
the same patient and the patient finally yield- 
ing. If mere suggestion is the cause, why is 
not once suggesting sufficient, as there is as full 
and intellectual apprehension at first of the 
suggestion as at the sixth time ? Passive per- 



SOCIAL FORCES. 123 

sons are his best subjects. But passive persons 
have no better apprehension of the suggestion 
than positive persons, although they yield easier 
to force. There can be no force without sub- 
stance. Bernheim requires passivity. That is 
non-resistance. What is that to do with receiv- 
ing a suggestion? Passivity and positivity 
relate only to physical force, not to intellectual 
apprehensions. He remarks, " Without doubt 
impressionability varies.'' What does he mean 
by impressionability but less capacity to resist 
force f He cannot mean less capacity to receive 
intellectual impressions, for his suggestions are 
all very simple. His whole argument proceeds, 
unconsciously, according to the laws of force 
and emanation, not upon mere intellectual sug- 
gestion. Again — U I define hypnotism as the 
induction of a peculiar psychical condition 
which increases the susceptibility to sugges- 
tion." There is a whole system of philosophy 
in the words " induction" and " peculiar." He 
has claimed that suggestion in the mind of the 
subject produced the phenomena. But here he 
admits an antecedent. That antecedent is a 
fluid, inducted. Psychologists will be loath to 
believe that suggestion of the plain and simple 
phenomena cited by him is not as readily 
received by one subject as by another ; but the 
" induction " of a " peculiar " psychical con- 



1M MIND IS MATTER. 

dition may have been by fluidic means in the 
first instance. The phenomena of hypnotic 
subjects are only dream acts. The condition of 
the subject is induced by a physical process, 
antecedent. Again he remarks : " It is true 
that certain subjects cannot resist because their 
will-power is weakened by fear or by the idea 
of a superior will-power which influences them 
in spite of themselves." Why use the word 
power ? No ' ' power " is required to make or to 
receive a mere suggestion. The weakest child, 
woman or man can receive a suggestion as 
quickly as any other. Then, if this hypnotism 
is from mere imagination and subjective voli- 
tion such subject could hypnotize himself ; or 
the suggestion could come from any source as 
well as from a positive individual, and this 
would ignore all the well-known phenomena of 
personal domination, and of craven submission 
in intellectual and social relations, as well as 
strike out of society all free agency, legal 
responsibility and individualism. Hypnotism 
is a social condition that has always been uni- 
versal and always will be until that coming 
time of universal and perfect individualism of 
men. It is something more than therapeutic 
treatment by a positive, bright, successful and 
joyous medical official over a few sick, ignorant 
and passive hospital patients who are "accus- 



SOCIAL FORCES. 125 

tomed to obedience " and to childish credulity, 
a class from which it seems Dr. Bernheim 
obtained his phenomena. Hypnotism, in its 
general and practical aspect, is the subjection 
of one mind and will to another, and this can 
be seen, and always has been seen, wherever 
two or more human beings have been together. 
Perhaps its therapeutic application has been 
more practical of late years than ever before, 
but there is something more in this grand phil- 
osophy than sawing off legs and pulling out 
teeth. It is difficult to see where Dr. Bernheim 
gets his authority for asserting that these 
results of his practice do away with all mes- 
meric philosophy. He appears to beg the ques- 
tion all through. If there were an emanating 
fluid accompanying the suggestion or command, 
according to Dr. Charpignon, how could Dr. 
Bernheim discover that fluid ? But it appears 
that Dr. Bernheim by his official and profes- 
sional authority always enforced his hypnotic 
cures by more or less " will "power and " com- 
mand." Because he has not detected this eman- 
ative fluid by any galvanometer or physical 
proof, is not a reason that there is no such fluidic 
process. It would strike the average* reasoner 
to be quite as logical that the weak-minded 
patients upon whom he operated were mesmer- 
ized as well as moralized. Looking over Dr. 



126 MIND IS MATTES. 

Bernheim's entire work we fail to see any 
demonstrative proof that there is no fluidic 
emanation, although the doctor doubtless was 
largely successful in hypnotic cures. The 
fluidic theory and suggestive theory are not 
incompatible with each other. They work 
together as mind and matter always work. 
Admitting all that Dr. Bernheim claims as to 
the power of imagination over disease, and as 
to his hypnotic suggestions, that does not dis- 
prove the fluidic theory, and it is difficult, from 
anything that he has published, to see why he 
attacked that theory. Undoubtedly Mesmer 
claimed too much, and his philosophy spread to 
charlatans, as the suggestive theory may yet 
spread. Let Dr. Bernheim try his hand at 
writing his " suggestions " and commands to a 
distant patient whom he has never seen and he 
will find just the success which a man would 
in silently willing another man to do a thing 
without commanding him to do it. 

Professor Donato, a Belgian, who is a recent 
successful performer in stage hypnotism, also 
takes dogmatic ground that the personal influ- 
ences of one will over another are wholly by 
moral an^l intellectual suggestion, and not a bit 
by mesmerism or emanation of a substance 
from the dominating will. His article in the 
Cosmopolitan magazine of August, 1890, with 



SOCIAL FORCES. 127 

the photogravure pictures, enbraces his whole 
theory and practice ; but neither the argument 
nor the physiognomy of his practiced corps of 
assistants succeeds in reaching the full credulity 
of all readers. It will take better skill in meta- 
physical reasoning than is exhibited in either 
Donato's or Bernheim's works to prove that the 
source of impulse in the person operated upon is 
wholly subjective. Like Bernheim, Donato begs 
the question and does not show by a single fact 
that there is not a fluidic power. Because he finds 
action in his subjects concurrent with his sug- 
gestion he stops there and says the impulse is 
fully subjective. How does he know there 
does not emanate from his brain a vibration, 
for he has a Napoleonic will, and [as he himself 
hath said it] he is ' ' quick, ardent, impetuous to 
excess.!' All through his Cosmopolitan article 
he speaks of the application of his will- " power " 
and the " force of my will." And he also speaks 
of men who are gifted " with prodigious moral 
magnetism and exercise an irresistible ascen- 
dency over all persons who surround them." 
Now the terms " force of will" and moral 
' ' magnetism " are but useless metaphors in the 
psychic theory that should never be used in sci- 
entific or philosophical procedure. The will 
can have no force or moral magnetism unless it 
be an objective and atomic force. We cannot 



128 MIND IS MATTER. 

reasonably conceive of one will controlling 
another by " force " unless by actual impact of 
substance. All other control is subjective and 
voluntary concurrence of the person whose 
mind is influenced, thus having in himself the 
necessary origin of all those abnormal so called 
somnambulic and so called hypnotic operations. 
If this be so, it dissipates into nothingness all 
claimed hypnotizing powers and the pretense of 
one man's superiority to another, unless the 
power is physical or by some subtile material 
agency. Donato's own photogravure looks like 
Napoleon Bonaparte ; and while some of his 
corps of assistants look physiognomically like 
passive, docile creatures, others have an air so 
far from the line of verdancy as to be suspected 
of bordering upon the tricky. If the fluid prin- 
ciple be a fact, as claimed by Mesmer, it is diffi- 
cult at present to see how it could be demon- 
strated except by analogy and through psychic 
results. The very fact that Professor Donato 
bases his success as a hypnotizer upon his 
"ardent and impetuous" temperament and 
" force of will" would seem to sustain the 
emanative theory ; else the same suggestion by 
a negative, piping, whining person would be 
sufficient for the mere intellectual perception of 
the subject. In Donato's use of the phrase " the 
domination of a strong will ' ' he explains 



SOCIAL FORCES. 129 

nothing. How can will " force" anything 
unless by contact ? Referring to Bernheim we 
ask what has a strong will to do with the 
suggestion ? Those terms belong to two different 
departments of mind. Suggestion belongs to 
the perceptive faculties. Will power is classed 
with the emotional. It is made up of contin- 
uity, persistence, courage and strength. In all 
human experience, ever since society began, it 
is instinctively believed by everybody that per- 
sonal ascendency and domination arises from 
something more than a mere suggestion to the 
perception of the subject and the voluntary 
submission of the subject to those suggestions. 
The great interest in the subject is not confined 
to punch and Judy exhibitions, nor even to the 
useful lines of therapeutics, but it involves all 
there is of social law and social phenomena. 
In Professor Donato's article he speaks of oper- 
ations being reported by eminent men as having 
been finally disproved. Professor Donato 
should not complain if the great world which 
doesn't know him, but is bent upon scientific 
proof, should provide its grain of salt when 
reading some of his statements, supposing there 
might be a mistake somewhere, such as that of 
throwing upon the floor, by look and threat, 
the young lawyer of Belgium. We do not know 
but that it was a mechanical motion of the 



130 MIND IS MATTER. 

young lawyer from the dread of bodily assault 
or a disposition to "accommodate" the professor. 
We might say that the thirty military students 
were playing pranks upon the professor because 
we cannot see into their minds any more than 
the professor can see our fluid emanation. It 
will be seen that in every instance of the phe- 
nomena that the professor has produced it has 
been by the bodily presence of the operator, as 
in Bernheim's cases. While Professor Donato 
is doubtless doing valuable service in the new 
discoveries it will not do for him to dogmatically 
assert that there is no truth in mesmerism, for 
we have had the incidents of his stage perform- 
ances, every one of them, in detail and in 
group, that he has just now illustrated in print, 
performed in public years and years ago and by 
different professors. There is an unfortunate 
resemblance in these stage exhibitions to the 
stereotyped manifestations of the spiritualists. 
They have for a generation had the same fish 
horns, tambourines, guitars, rattling ropes, 
phosphorescent breathings and cabinet sleight 
of hand. So the public hypnotizers have their 
" chilly groups," "overheated groups," "over- 
weighted " individuals, " paralyzed " individuals 
and grotesque antics, all of which have not yet 
reached the public confidence. Bernheim and 
Donato cannot upset holy writ, nor such 



SOCIAL FORCES. 131 

thinkers as Zeno, Bacon, Schelling, Walter 
Scott, Gladstone, Emerson, Spinoza, Zschokke, 
and hosts of others. 

"When she had heard of Jesus, came in the press 
behind and touched his garment. And Jesus imme- 
diately knowing, in himself, that virtue had gone out 
of Mm, turned him about in the press and said, Who 
touched my clothes ? "—Mark v. 27-30. 

There is a broader hypnotism than that of 
hospitals, it being atomic contact of souls. God 
hypnotizes man, man hypnotizes the brute, 
males hypnotize females, the positive half of 
society hypnotize the passive half, the judge 
hypnotizes the lawyer and the lawyer the jury, 
the general the army, the master the servant. 
Sometimes all this is reversed by an inborn 
power. All have suffered this magical thrall- 
dom against our will and intelligence. The 
suggestion of the law is nothing unless backed 
by public sentiment. Eules are naught except 
forced by living will. There is not enough 
morality or intellectuality in society to keep it 
together without this objective magnetic 
cement. There is a widespread social hypnotism 
that tends to prove a widespread objective 
force. The world is too far advanced to say, 
' i What we cannot see is not." 

Dr. Osgood Mason, in the Arena for April, 
1891, writes concerning a psychic medium in 
hypnotism : 



132 MIND IS MATTER. 

" There are facts, however, which tend to show T the 
insufficiency of suggestion to cover the ground, and 
which point to some other definite influence as efficient 
in hypnotic processes. * * * It Cthe psychic me- 
dium) is the medium by which hypnotic sleep is induced 
and hypnotic suggestions are realized through dis- 
tances far too great~to allow suggestion to reach even 
the most sensitive subject by any of the ordinary chan- 
nels of sense perception. In its widest sense it is the 
medium of influence which manifests itself throughout 
the world of organic life ; the medium through which 
qualities are perceived, opinions formed, and loves 
established ; independent of knowledge gained by 
ordinary sense perceptions or any process of reasoning. 
It is the medium of intuition. A grave doubt is spring- 
ing up in the minds of careful and thorough observers 
regarding the universal application of suggestion as 
claimed by the Nancy School. The coming school will 
modify materially the present tenching on the subject. 
It will take for its fundamental idea a psychic medium 
or a psychic force." 

It is a gravely dangerous teaching that mere 
suggestion can throw a mind into abnormal, 
passive action , for it strikes at the root, abso 
lutely, of all individual and legal responsibilit} 7 . 
Suggestion may come into the mind from 
unknown and irresponsible sources, or may 
originate involuntarily with the mind. Whence 
come those thousand unnatural suggestions and 
fancies to us, that the will and judgment are 
constantly dissipating ? We are held responsible 
by divine and civil law for not acting upon 
them. But with the fluidic theory, which is 
objective and somewhat of a physical and tan- 
gible force, the free agency is left practically 
intact ; the fluid may be resisted and escaped 



SOCIAL FORCES." 133 

from, but the suggestion cannot. Whether 
this materialistic overflow from one mind to 
another can ultimately overcome free agency, 
is not a matter of a doubt, because it being 
physical it follows physical laws, loses its force 
by distance, and can be resisted. It takes time 
and persistence to apply it and thus it may be 
evaded by absence and a counteracting mental 
force. We can escape and resist an objective 
force, but we could not escape suggestions that 
encounter and infect us like particles of dust and 
unseen germs in the air. Suggestion is as likely 
to fall on sterile as upon responsive minds, and 
thus produce do suggestive fruit. Suggestions 
from governments and laws do not find obedi 
ence alone through the fears, interests, or moral 
sense of citizens. There is also an unseen, 
objective real force that goes from the presence 
and person of the administrator of the govern- 
ment and the laws. No prerogatives, privileges, 
or " divinity " would save a king from being 
worried to death, unless he could exercise this 
objective material force of a solid personality 
with his commands. And without that mys- 
terious original power, even kings have become 
pitiable tools and laughing stocks. All govern- 
ment would run to chaos but for this personal 
power in its administration. He is an unsuc- 
cessful judge who depends wholly upon the law, 



134 MIND IS MATTER. 

and none upon his own will. Force is some- 
thing of power and influence, positively and 
actively within itself, and irresistible except as 
against a superior force. Suggestion has no 
" force, " because it can be resisted and disre- 
garded. Suggestions left to the moral sense, 
interest or fears of mankind, will have but a 
sickly time. This personal magnetism in 
society, the church, business, government, is 
the life, impulse and stay of law and order. If 
not, we might abolish all executive officers and 
rely upon the suggestions of the statute. That 
condition may come about in the " good time 
coming," when the individual shall be emanci- 
pated and shall come fully into his princehood 
of individuality, when the State will require not 
the force that impels the slave, as now, but 
the citizen to be a law unto himself. This per- 
sonal force is as prevalent and potent now in 
society as the reservoirs of electricity that fill 
the Universe, and is always ready for use and 
direction by mankind. Every social phenom- 
enon indicates its presence. The " suggestive " 
theory of hypnotism makes a man's mind 
simply like an alarm clock, automatic, ready to 
be touched into action like any machine and by 
any outward cause. But results show that 
man's mind requires more than the touch. 
Many may touch but there is no go. AH 



SOCIAL FORCES. 135 

% depends on who touches and upon what goes 
along with the touch. There was more in 
Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon than " suggestion." 
Professor J. W. Hermann, the prestidigitateur, 
in a communication to the N. Y. Herald, made 
this statement : 

"I can liken the essence of hypnotism to nothing 
else than a subtle fluid vibrating in the mind of the 
magnetizer, and which passes from him by means of 
his hands or otherwise into the subject, upon whom it 
produces effects either corresponding to those felt by 
the principal or desired by him. " 

His article of three columns in length evinces 
scholarly research and native ability. A man 
visits a stranger to petition him for something. 
The visitors impressment is made before a 
word is spoken, and sometimes before the eyes 
meet. An influence goes before that is not 
" manner." A business man advertises for a 
clerk. Of the many that apply, one instantly 
makes the successful impression, regardless of 
the specious statements. Business men seldom 
foot up qualities. They select instantly by 
intuition. There is thus a similarity in man to 
the divine power, a spiritual radiation without 
sensible physical media. This positive force is 
simply personal strength and selfishness ; it is a 
continually aggressive will, a mind chronically 
in a condition of attack and defence without 
ceasing. All the food such a man eats is trans- 



136 MIND IS MATTER. 

muted into egoism. The negative man may 
have this when summoned by resolution and 
motive, but with him it is only intermittent ; 
while with the positive man it is nature itself. 
The man or woman w?io has this power, and 
knows it, united with intelligence, address, and 
experience, can make good all the old concept 
of magic and witchcraft. This self -asserting 
personality still stalks abroad as it did in ruder 
days when there was little law, but now with 
silent and insidious power. In the progress of 
knowledge and civil rule we have made laws to 
protect property, life, and limb, to punish 
assault and battery and breaches of the peace, 
and have ordained constitutions to snub strong- 
minded chieftains ; bat what protects us from 
mysterious magnetic kings, barons, despots, 
highwaymen, who, unbeknown to us, rob us 
not only of energy but our rightful position in 
business and society % 

If mental magnetism is real force, we must 
study its laws for our own safety. The days 
of personal sway are not passed. We are still 
slaves to it. Self -asserting personalities are 
found in offices, homes, assemblies, workshops, 
states. Individualism has hardly assumed its 
dignity more than it did in the days of feudal- 
ism or patriarchism. To discover this unseen 
force, analyze it, learn how to cultivate it, 



SOCIAL FORCES. 137 

where it is weak and control it where it is 
strong, to develop the dignity of the individual 
and destroy this all-powerful dominion of 
fashion, social epidemics, passional storms, fads, 
and spiritual contagions, is a study the race 
should address itself to. 

When an audience is moved by an orator, do 
the people themselves arouse what is independ- 
ently within them, corresponding to the images 
and fire that is in the speaker, from his sug- 
gestions, words, gestures, actions, and example, 
or does there proceed from the orator an out- 
going substance that infects the minds of the 
audience like contagion, or as one magnet 
inducts power into another? A man comes 
home at night from his work and reads in the 
paper that his country's flag has been fired 
upon. He has his " suggestion." He gets into 
a passion. There the editor has in type simply 
aroused in the man by " suggestion " similar 
faculties to the editor's. But the man goes out 
to public meeting and there the fire of the 
orator and the combined elements of the peo- 
ple whelm him on to the cannon's mouth. This 
is simple, outward, objective, substantive, 
literal magnetism or electricity, not a moral 
force. A woman is told that her absent child 
is dying ; she arouses within herself a subjective 
sympathy. When she reaches the presence of 



138 MIND IS MATTER. 

the child there is then established a sympathy 
that is a link between her and the child, as 
actual, real, objective and sustaining as the 
sinews that bind the inert planets in obedient 
orbits about the sun, or as the fresh air that is 
let into the sick room, or the medicine that is 
put into the blood. 

Society has noticed this power in men and 
given it various names — " Personality," " Indi- 
viduality," " Magnetism," " Will-power," 
"Ballast," etc. But these terms do not clear 
up the mystery. Dr. Storrs said of the ancient 
Sultans: "Their souls were tempered with 
steel." What did he mean? — that soul is 
materal, substantial, and has physical temper ? 
Or was it with him a figure of speech ? When 
shall the great ones learn to use language with 
one meaning ? The writer once sat by a dis- 
tinguished judge under the thrilling presence of 
a speaker, when the judge remarked, "Ah, if 
that man had been nominated for presidency 
what a magnetism he would have sent through 
the land." He was asked what he meant by 
magnetism, whether his remark was figurative 
or implied a reality? He could not tell. And 
Gibbon, said of Peter the Hermit : " A nerve 
of exquisite feeling was touched which vibrated 
to the heart of Europe." Was he, too, using a 
simile ? It was literal ; the multitudes were led 



SOCIAL FORCES. 139 

on to Palestine by mere public magnetism as an 
objective reality. The " nerve" was physical 
vibration and attraction. 

To those who answer that bodily expression 
and the eyes create the influence by arousing 
subjective similarities, let the reply be that 
language bears no proportion to the power of 
the soul. The soul is infinite ; language is 
local, incidental and temporary. Language 
is never adequate to express soul. Then, as 
social beings, have we no power of communi- 
cating but by words, looks, gestures ? Mind 
was made before speech ; the social bond before 
education. Mathews in " Orators and Oratory," 
makes this remark : 

" The orator has to remember that the communica- 
tion of thought and feeling from mind to mind is not 
a process which depends on a proper selection of 
words only. There is another and more spiritual con- 
ductor, a mysterious moral contagion by means of 
which, independently of the words of the speaker, 
thoughts and feelings are transmitted to his auditory. 
This quality, call it personal magnetism, call it a 
divine afflatus, call it with Dr. Bushnell, a person's 
atmosphere, or what you will — it is the only all potent 
element which, more than any other, distinguishes the 
true orator." 

It may be more than a "moral" contagion. 
Then we may ask, if language is not a sure 
medium of communication, what medium have 
we ? All the works of the Creator are perfect ; 
as social beings has He left us with imperfect 



140 MIND IS MATTES. 

means of understanding each other ? We have 
a social harmony and concurrence besides the 
conventionalities. How do we maintain that 
harmony? This universal psychic fluid must 
be the means or the medium of our sympathy 
and mental assimulation. What keeps the 
herds together and gives them their intelligent 
direction ? They have no speech, and are not 
guided by agreement or command. What 
makes a migrating flock of birds go hither and 
thither, alighting here and there with as good 
* arrangement as any convention or army ? They 
have no conventional sign ; they are mute ; they 
have no chosen leader ; now one part of the 
flock goes ahead and then another part ; yet 
they are governed by one result and their jour- 
ney is performed successfully. The trite 
answer will come that it is "instinct." Well, 
what is instinct ? Simultaneousness and coin- 
cidence of idea will not suffice to explain. A 
bird might "think" forever, yet the other 
birds would not know it, unless they were 
actually connected. Instinct is contact— liter- 
ally, physical touch. 

School teaching is more wearisome than an 
equivalent of purely intellectual effort in soli- 
tude, because there is the objective, resistive, 
mental magnetism of a multitude to overcome, 
^ the same as in muscular wrestling. 



SOCIAL FORCES. 141 

Publications are daily bearing testimony of 
the operation of this spiritual natural force. 
The phenomena of facts are occurring all about 
us as part of a common life. With -day and 
date, name and place, the daily press gives 
them. We take new facts, not old ones. 



CHAPTEK VI. 

MAGNETIC LIFE. 

Further phenomena of spirit matter — Reported facts of our 
time — The physical theory of prayer and faith-cure — Death- 
Ibed visions — Influence of departed spirits — The intuition of 
women — Electricity in the blood — Moral influences in the 
air — Magnetism, nerve-fluid and vitality — Magnetic propul- 
sion of blool circulation — Electricity in the voice — Electric- 
ity is a physical fluid. Relation of magnetism and electricity 
to soul. 

Like the myriad of aereolites that are falling 
unseen upon the land and into the sea are 
psycho-physical phenomena occurring every- 
where of which the public are not apprised, 
until they have numbered many thousands. 
Every day in the public press are avouched 
facts, a few of which are herewith cited. Eead- 
ers will judge for themselves of their weight as 
testimony to our theory. They are not selected 
as particularly forcible examples, but as represen- 
tatives of millions like them, enough in num- 
ber to form a system of philosophy. 

"Utica, N. Y., Jan. 27. — A faith cure is reported 
in Morris, Otsego County, and vouched for by repu- 
table people. For 12 years Alice, daughter of George 



MAGNETIC LIFE. 143 

Benjamin, has been an invalid on account of spinal 
injuries received by being thrown from a wagon. 
Most of the time she has been confined to her bed. 
Nothing that physicians could do for her helped her. 
Six weeks ago it was thought she could not live long. 
On Jan. 16 she began to pray for restoration to health. 
A week later she walked to a neighbor's house, several 
rods distant, ate a hearty dinner and walked home. 
The same evening she rode a mile and a half, took 
part in a church meeting, assuring her astonished 
friends that she was perfectly well. She has since 
attended daily to household duties, and to all inquiries 
answers that her recovery is due to God's goodness. 
She is about 30 years old." — iV. Y. limes. 

" Sickness came to my household — hopeless sick- 
ness, as it seemed to many. At 3 o'clock On Saturday 
afternoon the invalid was carried to the steamer for 
Savannah. At 11 o'clock the next day, being Sunday, 
standing in this very place, a man of God prayed for 
the recovery of the sick one. At that time, eleven 
o'clock, she who had been prostrated three weeks, with 
some help, walked up on deck. The occurrence was 
as near to being miraculous as I can imagine. That 
she was hopelessly sick people who sat up with her 
night after night and are here can testify. That the 
prayer for her recovery was offered in this pulpit 
thousands of people could testify. That at 11 o'clock 
on that Sunday morning she walked up on deck, as 
by a miraculous recovery, I call the passengers on the 
San Jacinto, commanded by Capt. Atkins, Dec. 16, to 
testify. This is no second-hand story. Prayer impo- 
tent ! If I dared to think there was no force in 
prayer, methinks God, after all he has done for me 
and mine, would strike me dead. Prayer impotent ! 
Why it is the mightiest force in the universe Light- 
ning has no speed, the Alpine avalanche has no power 
compared with it." — T. U. Talmage. 

This prayer of Dr. Talmage was not a 
" moral " effect. If the results were as claimed, 
it was either a physical effect of the Holy 
Spirit, or the transit of the human magnetism. 



144 MIND IS MATTER. 

It would be less miraculous thau the palpitation 
of an insect or the growth of a flower, both 
of which are by God's present will. 

"Brazil, Ind., Oct. 11.— Mrs. Rev. S. C. Ken- 
nedy, whose husband is pastor of Centre Point M. E. 
Church, has had a remarkable faith cure experience. 
She was the victim of chronic corporal endometritus, 
with decided anti-flexion, one of the worst diseases to 
which woman is subject. The blight of her earlier 
years, it culminated in maturer life in her complete 
prostration. For months she had been unable to leave 
her bed. The best medical aid the State afforded was 
sought, but without avail. But her story in her own 
language, fortunately, is in substance as follows : 
4 In my despair I turned to the Great Physician, 
who answered : 'Trust me and thou shalt be healed.' 
One night in the midst of an interesting revival meet- 
ing in the church, I spent an hour in earnest prayer. I 
called to mind the compassionate Saviour, while he 
was on earth, healing the leper, unstopping the ears of 
the deaf, opening the eyes of the blind, and I asked : 
"Is he not the same Jesus to night ? " I prayed for 
some evidence, if I was to be healed. Immediately a 
Heavenly presence bowed down over me. Oh ! the 
unutterable bliss of that hour. I prayed earnestly and 
with a faith that took hold of the promises of God. 
Two or three times the presence seemed disposed to 
withdraw, but remained at my importuning. This 
continued for about twenty minutes, when I was 
more than ever convinced I was to be healed.'" — 
JST. Y. Times. 

"I am continually witnessing the most remarkable 
instances of answers to prayers. My life is made up 
of them." — Bpurgeon. 

And Spurgeon is a hard-headed, practical 
man. 

If we inquire about us we shall find many 
people have some supernatural experience. 



Magnetic life. 145 

Failure to collate these experiences has left the 
world in ignorance of spiritual laws. This 
author has had narrated to him, by many per- 
sons of proved intelligence and honor, the coin- 
cidence of dreams with facts before unknown 
to the dreamers, in too many instances for pub- 
lication. 

" Hutchinson, Kan., March 18. — At Burrton, a lit- 
tle town twelve miles east of here, for the past six 
months the twelve-year-old daughter of W. H. Osborne 
has been afflicted with some mysterious disease which 
has confined her continually to her bed and has baffled 
the skill of the local physicians. Last Friday night 
the parents claim they had a revelation that earnest 
prayer would cure their little girl. The next morning 
they knelt by the sufferer's bedside and earnestly 
invoked Divine intervention. The invalid was asleep. 
Shortly afterwards she awoke and expressed a desire 
to get up. Two hours later she was dressed and play- 
ing in the yard with other children, and to-day to all 
appearances is quite well." — jV. Y. World. 

"A Chicago gentlemen, who is a prominent oper- 
ator on the Board of Trade and a vestryman in one of 
our Episcopal churches, the other day related an 
experience that fell under his own observation. ' Some 
years ago,' he said, ' my father, with whom I lived in 
an Iowa town, had a severe illness, from which he was 
convalescing at the time of the occurrence I am about 
to relate. One evening on going to his room he 
inquired where Levi Whiting had gone. I said that 
Levi Whiting, who lived in our old home in Western 
New- York, had not been there, but that he had been 
dreaming. He said that Levi was there, that he had 
had a good visit with him, and 1 failed to convince 
him that it was a dream, of which I had no doubt at 
the time. As far as we knew Levi Whiting was in 
good health, but a few days after this we heard of his 
death, and on getting the particulars it was found that 
he died in New- York the same hour of this occur- 
rence in Iowa. My father was a member of the Pies- 



146 MIND IS MATTER, 

byterian Church and an -exemplary Christian, and, as 
far as I know, never saw a spiritualistic medium in his 
life, but he always firmly believed that the spirit of his 
old neighbor paid him a parting visit before leaving 
for the celestial abodes.' " — Chicago Journal, Sept. 23. 

"Vincennes, Ind., March 20. — The body of John 
Murphy, who was drowned on March 7, was found 
this morning by Deputy Postmaster Roseman, who 
asserts that he was impelled to the river's side and to 
the very spot where the body was. This is the fifth 
body that he has found in an almost similar manner. 
— {Clipping.) 

" Washington Irving Bishop, who became famous in 
this country and Europe by his extraordinary, and to 
many people inexplicable, mind -reading performances, 
died at noon yesterday at the Lambs Club, No, 34 
West Twenty-sixth street. The circumstances attend- 
ing his death were as singular as, and in perfect keep- 
ing with, his remarkable career, for it was the effort to 
perform a wonderful feat of thought-reading which 
caused the cataleptic fit that ultimately proved fatal. 
Bishop had asserted that if two gentlemen would go 
to a distant part of the house and select a word in some 
book he would find the book, the page, and the word. 
Dr. Irwine and Dr. Greene then descended to the 
basement, and among a lot of old account books picked 
out the minute book of the Club and on page 87 selected 
the word "Townsend," afterwards secreting the book 
in a disused drawer among some discarded rubbish. 

On returning to the room where Bishop was sitting 
Dr. Irwine again endeavored to dissuade him from pro- 
ceeding in what he gravely informed him was a very 
dangerous experiment. But Bishop for the second 
time remarked that he would accomplish the feat even 
if it killed him, and insisted upon being immediately 
blindfolded. When the handkerchief had been tied 
over his eyes he was led downstairs, his right hand 
being clasped on Mr. Greene's wrist. In due time he 
discovered the room, then the drawer and the book, 
and on the leaves of the latter being rapidly turned 
over by him, he stopped at the right one and then ran 
over it with a pencil. Suddenly he seemed to make a 
private mark, and then feverishly requested that the 
book be brought upstairs. He had no sooner entered 



MAGNETIC LIFE. 147 



the room where the members were assembled than lie 
pulled a bandage from his eyes and exclaimed : 'Quick ! 
quick ! give me a bit of paper ! and on receiving 
it he dashed off " Dnesnwot," that being the selected 
word written backward, so that it could be read in a 
mirror. He had performed the feat, but scarcely had 
he written the word when he was again seized by the 
cataleptic fit, from which he never recovered/' — JV". T. 
World. 

"The Hidden Egg. — One of the most interesting 
of these outdoor experiments I ever performed took 
place in Berlin 12 months ago last Easter. Having 
purchased an Easter egg and put into it a quantity of 
gold the egg was given to Mr. Kasson, the American 
Minister, to hide anywhere within a radius of a kilo- 
meter of the Hotel de Rome, w T hich was the starting 
point. Accompanied by Count Moltke, his Excellency 
Dr. Lucius, and Prince Ratibon, as a committee of 
inspection, Mr. Kasson took away the egg and hid it 
while I remained with the balance of the committee in 
the hotel. Instead of taking Mr. Kasson by the hand 
as I had done in other cases, I caused him to be con- 
nected with me by a piece of thin wire. One end of the 
wire was twisted around my right wrist and the other 
end arouud his left ; the coil itself remained slack. 
Thus connected we started on our errand of search. 
From time to time the wire was drawn taut and it cut 
into our wrists with the force I exercised in pulling 
my subject along ; but, as far as possible, I avoided 
actually touching his hand with my own. After leav- 
ing the Unter den Linden we turned into a narrow 
street and then into the Emperor Wilhelm's stables. 
I went up to a corn box and found it locked. For a 
moment I took Mr. Kasson's hand in mine in order to 
increase the impression. This done, I moved toward 
Prince Ratibon, and putting my hand in his pocket I 
fetched out the key of the box, which I at once opened 
and inside, among the corn, I discovered the hidden 
egg. The egg and its contents were afterward pre- 
sented to the crown princess of Germany as an Easter 
gift for the Kindergarten, in which her Imperial 
Highness takes so deep an interest." — Stuart C. Cum- 
berland, in the Nineteenth Century. 



148 MIND IS MATTER. 

The following, if true, illustrates physical 
impression by mental causes : — 

"A wonderful freak of nature, resulting from the 
charming of a hen by a huge rattlesnake, is reported 
by Major Scheller de Buol, who resides just south of 
this city, on the line of the Burlington road. The 
Major states that Friday last he had occasion to search 
for a favorite hen belonging to his coop of rare fowl, 
and he found her near a pile of brush, trembling like a 
leaf and gazing with strained eyes and neck transfixed 
at a huge rattlesnake, which lay coiled not four feet 
away, with head and tail up, ready for its fatal spring. 
Major de Buol had a hoe in his hand at the time, and 
lost no time in despatching his snakesbip. He then 
attempted to "shew" the hen to the barn, but she 
could not be made to stir, and he according!}' picked 
her up and carried her in his arms to the coop. Tl e 
strangest thing about the incident above narrated is 
that for three successive days thereafter the hen laid 
an egg on the large end of which was an exact repre- 
sentation in miniature of the rattlesnake — the fiat head, 
short, thick body and button-tail of this species of 
reptile being strikingly apparent. Otherwise the eggs 
were perfectly formed and of ordinary size. The 
coils or representations of the snake are raised a quar- 
ter of an inch from the shell and are similarly formed 
on the inside, showing conclusively that it was the 
work of nature. The eggs were brought to this city 
and presented to Dr. E. B. Kitloe by Major de Buol, 
and are now on exhibition at Siniger's drug store, 
where they have been seen and examined by hundreds 
of people." — Galena Correspondence of Chicago Tribune. 

"Mr. Washington Irving Bishop, of well-known 
reputation for the interesting feats which he performs 
through what he calls "mind-reading," has success- 
fully given in New York cit} r the remarkable exhibi- 
tion of his power which aroused so much interest and 
discussion in London and St. Petersburg. On Ihe 
morning of March 5th, Mr. Bishop invited to his 
rooms at the Hoffman House, a number of well-known 
society ladies, actresses, writers and journalists, from 
whom he chose a committee to assist in the proposed 
test, and to bear witness to its genuineness. This 



MAGNETIC LIFE. 149 

committee consisted of Mr. Henry Guy Carleton, of the 
World; Mr. H. C. Buuner, the editor of Puck; Dr. E. F. 
Hoyt, and Colonel Thomas W. Knox, the well-known 
author. Mr. Bishop borrowed a diamond brooch from 
one of the ladies, and gave it to the committee to hide 
— anywhere within a mile of the Hoffman House. The 
committee departed, and returned after half an hour's 
absence, announcing that the article was hidden. The 
" mind reader" then had himself blindfolded, put 
himself en rapport with the members of the committee, 
and located a certain spot on the map of New York as 
the place where the pin was concealed. Then, still 
blindfolded, he rushed down to the street, and was 
lifted into a buggy, which was drawn by two horses. 
By his side was Dr. Hoyt. Mr. Carleton and Colonel 
Knox sat behind. A thin wire attached to Mr. Bishop 
was fastened closely round the wrist of each member 
of the committee. Mr. Buuner remained behind and 
inclosed in a sealed envelope a slip of paper telling 
where the pin was. Mr. Bishop drove rapidly, and by 
a somewhat circuitous route, to the Gramercy Park 
Hotel, nearly half a mile distant from the Hoffman 
House. Supported by his commitlee, Mr. Bishop 
entered the hotel, marched into the reception room, 
advanced to the south side, steered towards a brouzed 
figure, lifted it from a vase, dived into a vase, and lo ! 
there was the borrowed pin. Out he came, followed by 
the committee, and waving the pin aloft, bowed his 
acknowledgements to the crowd outside. Then he 
put himself in his carriage, and hastened back to the 
Hoffman House, where Mr. Bunner's envelope was 
opened. It described the hiding place of the jewel pre- 
cisely as the psychological diviner had found it. 

The feat was certainly an astounding one. It has 
been explained in different ways, by both skeptics and 
believers ; but, so far as we know, Mr. Bishop is the 
only person who has as yet been able to perform it." — 
2T. T. Times. 

This is assumed to be accounted for by mus- 
cular sensitiveness. Even if so, that would be 
as miraculous as direct mind -reading. 

The Nineteenth Century, after citing a large 



150 MIND IS MATTER. 

number of well authenticated cases of mind- 
reading, contains this : — 

"A permanent magnet brought into a room will 
throw any surrounding iron into a similar condition. 
Similarly we may conceive that the vibration of mole- 
cules of brain-stuff, may be communicated to an inter- 
vening medium, and so pass from one brain to another 
with corresponding impressions. Further advances 
along the lines of research here indicated, may necessi- 
tate a modification of that general view of the relation 
of mind to matter, to which modern science has long 
been gravitating." 






We have seen a blind man sit down to a 
piano, spread his fingers and strike the chords 
instantly. How did he know their location 
without having previously touched the piano ? 

" A month ago or so, the wife of Jacob Berean, of 
Marlborough, N. Y., had her right leg amputated. A 
week ago she complained that tw T o of the toes over- 
lapped each other, and that it pained her dreadfully. 
Unknown to her, Mr. Berean dug the leg up and 
straightened out the toes. He then went home and 
asked his wife how she felt, when she told him she 
suffered no more." — (A Clipping.) 

" Curtis McGregor, of Caddo Peak, who had his arm 
mutilated, used to sit up and walk about the room, but 
complained from the first of a pain in the amputated 
hand, and he declared that bugs were in it. This con- 
tinued until the eighth day after the amputation, 
when friends exhumed and examined the amputated 
arm, which had been buried in a box, with a cloth 
wrapped about it. A large bug was found in the hand 
as stated by McGregor." — Waco News, Texas. 

George Crooke speaks of a " nerve atmos- 
phere." Swendenborg saw a conflagration by 




MAGNETIC LIFE. 151 

clairvoyance some hundred miles distant while 
it was occurring. 

The following quotations have a character of 

atomicity. Dr. Meyrick Goulbourne, Dean of 
Norwich, has remarked : 

"TheJELoly Spirit is not an illumination once for all, 
but it is a germ of life and strength capable of infinite 
development. It is a seed, and like all seeds, liable to 
check in its growth . It shoots up into the climate of 
a wicked world, and as in nature plants are exposed to 
blight which is said to be composed of hosts of minute 
insects, so in the moral world, grace is apt to be 
thwarted by legions of fallen angels whom the Scrip- i 
ture speaks of as swarming around us on all sides." 

What are these fallen angels swarming about 
us but social vibrations ? 

"Never by any changes occurring in itself; by itself 
either voluntary or involuntary, does the human soul 
become regenerated; but it is the coming-in of some 
element from without." — Dr. Charles F. Deems. 

The following is a wonderfully important 
statement, both from the respectability of the 
source and its explicit n ess : 

" The Right Rev. W. Taylor, addressing a large con- 
gregation at the Simpson M. E. Church of the City of 
Brooklyn at the Simpson memorial, 1884, said that he 
had attended a conference twenty-six years ago, at 
Pittsburg, having visited the bishop wdio was alarm- 
ingly ill, and that the bishop had requested him to have 
the brethren pray for him. He went to the conference 
and told the brethren the desire of the dying brother, 
and they all knelt down straightway together before 
the Lord. They had not been on their knees more 
than ten minutes, than through every one of them 
went a divine slwck, which touched every heart and 



152 MIND IS MATTER. 

thrilled every being, and there came all at once a con- 
viction that our prayers had been heard, and that the 
bishop would not die. We simultaneously arose re- 
joicing, shook hands and blessed the Lord that our 
brother was saved from death. It was the Holy Spirit 
that notified us that our prayers were heard. All 
joined in the glad exclamation, ' The Lord hath heard 
our prayer.' Dr. Bowman, now Bishop Bowman, 
made a note of the exact moment of the occurrence, and 
we afterwards learned that it was at that very time — 
while we were yet on our knees praying for his recovery 
— that the sickness left him. The physician who was 
attending him returned after a short absence, and he 
exclaimed, ' Bishop, what has happened ? ' and he 
replied that he felt better, and that he knew he was 
going to get well. The doctor raised his hands and 
said, 'A miracle, a miracle/ and so it was a mira- 
cle."— N. 7. Times. 

Did the Kev. Mr. Taylor make any mistake 
about his statements of fact ? 

An educated, cultured, experienced, chastened 
woman arrived at an age when the follies of 
life have lost their allurement, when the flames 
of all passions have vanished, when her body 
has ripened away into her soul, as the fruit 
ripens away into the seed that contains the 
dynamic activity of another life, content with 
the present, benignly forgiving of the past, and 
serenely contemplating the beyond, is truly a 
spiritual oracle. Educated old men are most 
always testy, pompous, or eccentric in some 
way, with physical complaints or intellectual 
hobby. But old women may have the graces of 
culture with harmlessness. She, more than 



MAGNETIC LIFE. 153 

any other living being, is emancipated from 
mortality into spirituality. As we see her 
calmly looking forward to the sunset of life, her 
face bears the sheen of eternity. Her soul is at 
rest ; she poises between this and the other 
world, and her transition is happy. With what 
clear penetration and unerring judgment does 
she regard all human relations about her. Un- 
prejudiced and kindly, her heart is susceptible 
to every touch of sympathy ; and to all the 
occult forces of nature her temperament is 
readily sensitive. If there be unseen agencies 
that warn us of the future, if there be intuitions 
that know heart secrets, they are found in the 
core of her being. To personal magnetism, to 
psychic influence, and to physical laws, she is 
as responsive as the lightest shred of down is to 
the breeze. 

"The sunset of life gives me mystical lore, 
And coming events cast their shadows before." 

Campbell. 

Eefined, intelligent and aspiring woman, de- 
barred lifelong from the vocations and avenues 
of distinction, her movements watched and 
hampered, her genius discouraged and ambition 
confined, deprived of power to redress her 
wrongs, her life is thus a thralldom. The only 
outlet to her growing soul is the beyond. She 
instinctively feels that there she will be eman- 



154 MIND IS MATTER. 

cipated, enfranchised, disenthralled, mated, for 
her soul is too gentle and pure for her environ- 
ments here. Spiritualism becomes her most 
profitable study and practice. Her faculties in 
that respect are of higher order than the mascu- 
line, which are more fitted for mere mortal 
pursuits. After love, spiritualism is her philos- 
ophy — her life. She is, thus, a safe guide, our 
leader, our forerunner, our prophet and our 
mediator there as she always has been here. 
The stillest, smallest and farthest away voice 
is the one to follow, for the heart is true to 
truth as the needle to the pole ; our interest- 
warped intellect often goes awry. The old 
lady, to give expression to her prophecies that 
are with her so deep in feeling, says, "I feel 
it in my bones." All around the great world, 
and in all ages, everybody else has used that 
expression. 

In business the following mysterious facts 
have been noticed. One man will make a busi- 
ness, compel custom, increase his power of 
attraction over the public, get rich, and the most 
acute observer cannot tell how he does it ; while 
another man, every way his superior in intel- 
ligence, character, energy, capital, and social 
standing, will utterly fail. That difference lies 
in the active, soul-dynamic force that is used as 
an unseen compulsory patronage. Self-poise, 



MAGNETIC LIFE. 155 

quiet, watchfulness, persistency, will bring all 
under one's influence in time, like all physical 
accretion to the larger mass. 

That humane sympathy is united to material 
gravitation is shown in our tendency to group 
about a centre. In the physical universe attrac- 
tion and gravitation shape everything into 
spheres, equi distant and equi potent, from the 
centre of attraction, like the world, planet, sun, 
the raindrops, the shot falling in a tower, etc. 
So masses of people, large or small, incline to a 
centre, equi distant, not alone volitionally, but 
also by jnaterial attraction. We speak of the 
family " circle," not the family square or the 
family paralellogram, or family line. So cities 
have circular forms as far as possible, not alone 
for convenience as regards distance, but from 
sympathy and involuntary attraction. The will- 
power of stronger individuality sometimes over- 
comes that tendency. This law is illustrated in 
domestic life. The man, the natural head of 
the household, who maintains his centrality of 
character and keeps himself level, becomes the 
absolute master, for weal or for woe, of his wife 
and children. They cleave unto him ; they are 
passive in their conduct. The old laws recogniz- 
ing this power will not allow a wife to testify 
either for or against her husoand. It is a 
hynoptism without " suggestion " The head of 



156 MIND IS MATTER. 

a family has a moral responsibility, not only to 
control, according to right and intelligence, but 
to keep from destroying the individualities of 
his family and from weakening their character 
by absorption of their force into his. The wife 
and the children should be allowed free, unen- 
thralled, unawed growth. Great men's sons 
are generally negative. Observe the crushing 
influence of the stronger person in a case of 
love, or in nuptial engagement where there is 
no love. How many women have gone with 
faltering heart, revolting judgment and leaden 
steps, bound hand and foot as with iron mana 
cles, to the matrimonial altar under a dreadful 
enthrallment, a fatal fascination, which has 
needed the strong will of a third person to 
break. 

It is an earnest question, prompted by ac- 
cepted phenomena, whether morbid states of 
mind, mania for vice and crime, are always 
original with the individual, or sometimes re- 
sultant from the surging of an atomic energy 
outside of him that is laden with those qualities. 
The victim of all vices, more illustratively 
veneral vice, may be the subject of spiritual in- 
fluences, or even inorganic sexual principles, 
objective to himself. A remark by Paracelsus 
was that "the air is so full of devils, that there 
is not as much as a hair's breadth between 



MAGNETIC LIFE. 157 

them." This would be literally true if atoms 
were devils. Disorganization of bodily health 
may be due from this moral social principle, in- 
stead of the so-called germs of disease. Much 
of these proclaimed germ theories are conjectu- 
ral. The atmosphere is made the scapegoat of 
many ills where there is no difference between 
it and the atmosphere where there is perfect 
health. Objective social morals may react upon 
the health of the individual the same as a man's 
own morals. " Outing" in the country, or 
' ' change of air" is beneficial to the health 
sometimes not from change of air but by escap- 
ing from noxious social and magnetic conditions, 
allowing the spirit to revive without the exhaus- 
tion of its powers by others or their overbearing 
repressions. There can be an unseen germless 
social element of society that produces discord 
in body and mind. 

As to an objective personal devil. There can 
be immoral infections from the earth. Differ- 
ent soils and exhalations will affect different 
moral conditions as well as affect different 
physical conditions. 

"If there is one thing palpable on the face of the 
Scriptures, it is the personal presence of a diabolical 
spirit of Satan, with whom Christ personally fought, 
and in whose power the whole world lies. There is 
nothing plainer or more simple than that every Chris- 
tian becomes the abode of a personal Holy Spirit." — 
Bev. George F. Pentecost. 



158 MIND IS MATTER. 

The "personal devil" is nothing more nor 
less than the objective and confluent badness of 
all mankind, conveyed by this social magnetic 
fluid. It is an outward force besetting us, and 
therefore the principle is the same as a personal 
devil, only it has been wrongly named by our 
forefathers, as they named witchcraft, using 
the term as an allegory. The Satan who tempted 
Eve was probably named as an allegory, the 
fall being the cumulative badness of the race*; 
Adam and Eve being also allegories, or the first 
persons named in history. A personal devil is, 
of course, inconsistent with a personal God. It 
is only a name for an i'm-personalevil influence. 
God would not create an antagonist and enemy 
to all his graciousness ; nor would he place a 
tempter in the way of his children. But if a 
personal devil has existed coevally with an in- 
dependent God, then God is not omnipotent nor / 
even creator. Man himself, through his free 
agency fell, and the causes of that fall are alle- 
gorized in "Lucifer." Much is laid to the 
" devil " that should be charged back upon 
mankind. 

Under this law of the materialization of the 
souls, and like parts or faculties of souls have a 
natural affinity and material cohesion with each 
other. Where one is endowed with a highly 
developed strength of any specific faculty, that 



MAGNETIC LIFE. 159 

faculty draws from invisible sources. The mu- 
sician augments his faculty from the musical 
beings around him, dead or alive, just as a 
magnet or poultice ; vice-appetite is augmented 
by the vice and appetites of objective psychic 
influences. All know the mysterious thralldom 
of appetite ; it appetizes the very will itself ; 
the will is prostrate before some overpowering 
outside influence. 

"The mind is probably resolved into nerve shocks 
that answer to waves of molecular motion that traverse 
nerve and nerve-centres ; mind is closely assimilated 
to, if not indeutified with, nervous changes." — Spencer. 

We hold that it is not the shock of the nerves 
but shock of something else in the nerves. 

It is a legend among women, "Sing to your 
plants, and they will thrive." And it is a fact, 
too. Singing arouses sympathy, and sympathy 
is a substantial food as real as the sunshine, the 
air, the water, and the earth. You may see a 
masculine, hard-natured woman affect to keep 
plants and flowers, but the sensitive things wilt 
and die as soon as they get under her influence. 

It is a familiar fact that a household often all 
awaken together, either very early or very late 
in the morning, without traceable cause. 

And why does nature demand, when affection 
is in operation, close contact and presence of 
two souls ? All forces diminish according to 



160 MIND IS MATTER. 

the square of their distance. This appears to 
be a law in soul force. When old friends meet 
there is a grasp of hands ; a shock of psychic 
force is discharged into each other. What kind 
of a father and mother would they be who, 
saying they love their children, yet never touch 
or clasp them? Love demands contact, and 
will not and cannot tolerate distance. 

Who has not noticed that when two or more 
persons become confined together exclusively 
for a while, how stale their souls become to each 
other, and how like a fresh breath, or pure 
breeze coming into a confined room, is the 
advent of another person with a commingling 
of fresh soul- substance. 

We know it is almost impossible to enjoy a 
good play or speech in a small audience. That 
is because there is less aggregate volume of soul 
to act and react upon and arouse the individual 
souL The greater enthusiasm of a large crowd 
over a small one is proverbial. Sometimes 
where the mass is large it upsets all judgment, 
and carries the strongest intellect away into 
mechanical demonstrations. This is illustrated 
in religious and political excitements ; in war, 
public fears, riots, panics. This mental infec- 
tion could not probably occur if all individual 
minds were isolated. Social influences are sub- 
stantial infections of mind, like the infection of 



MAGNETIC LIFE. 161 

diseases. Observers and the practical newspaper 
men of the day, are hinting at this philosophy. 
Bishop Buer said, " A nation may go mad the 
same as an individual." How can it unless the in- 
dividuals are connected ? A New York newspaper 
recently spoke of a man becoming enthralled, 
ruined, and killed by the * ' magnetic, overawing 
influence of the Vanderbilt family ;" and his 
decline was a mystery to the physicians. A 
leading journal recently avowed its belief in an 
' ' electric current in large masses of men which 
leads them on automatically to riot." The 
same paper believes in " contagious insan- 
ity." It announces the theory of public excite- 
ments "sweeping from one individual to 
another like contagious diseases." 

Some holidays, will, without traceable cause, 
be differently observed by the same community. 
One Christmas will be merry and noisy in a 
large city, and another Christmas will be quiet, 
universally so much so as to strike every obser- 
ver. There will be no apparent cause for these 
social whims. Communities are silently and 
mysteriously animated and directed as one, like 
an individual in his humors and conduct. How 
does this happen without conventional agree- 
ment or notice ? A community in mind must 
be etherially connected. Accidental concur- 
rence of a million individuals could not happen. 



162 MIND IS MATTER. 

It is a very noticeable fact to travellers, that 
towns possess an individualized mental charac- 
ter ; just exactly as men bear personal traits 
and moods. Whether this pervading sentiment 
that is in a community comes of involuntary 
imitation and moral example, or from actual 
inoculation and material conception, is a 
question. Some towns have a style of business 
thrift and practice ; others are loose and lazy. 
Some have open-handed sociability ; others are 
exclusive and unsocial. Some are studious and 
cold ; others are impulsive and rollicking. 
Some are noted for amours ; others are pure. 
Some are especially distinguished for religion ; 
some for temperance, games, travels, diver- 
sions, etc. In short, of all the sentiments and 
impulses in the individual mind, it can be seen 
that single communities take them on, all 
apparently taking their guidance from one or 
more strong minds. Is it emanation or sugges- 
tion, imitation or inoculation? Are the har- 
monies of a mass of people the result of mere 
isolated and accidental matching of the individ 
uals, or of real magnetic contact and connec- 
tion? 

A boy remains asleep on the Fourth of July 
morning amid all the racket of cannon and fire- 
crackers, but the mere calling of his name by a 
comrade awakens him instantly. Is that a 



MAGNETIC LIFE. 163 

sympathetic force penetrating to the sensorium ? 

Deaf mutes who are said to interpret the 
speech of others by the movement of the lips 
will watch the eye and the whole countenance 
as though getting a spiritual impression to aid 
them to discover what the words are that are 
spoken. 

In jurisprudence, respect is given by appellate 
courts to verdicts by juries because they con- 
front the witnesses ; and the appellate courts 
know it cannot get the whole truth by reading 
the '''cold pages" of the report. The juug^s 
have been accustomed to call it the "manner " 
of the witness that produces the true effect. It 
is probably not the "manner" but rather the 
magnetic transmission of the truth, involunta- 
rily, from the mind of the witness to the minds 
of the court and jury. They peer through his 
verbal testimony into his soul. 

As to the involuntary power of a positive 
man over a negative man. the Portland (Oregon) 
Neivs speaks of two comrades meeting, whon 
one was seized involuntarily with the motions 
of the other, gesture, and words in every detail, 
until the spell was broken by the interference 
of a third person. Was this from " suggestion" 
or emanation of force ? 

The Cleveland Herald record? the case of a 
corpse being left at the Chicago morgue for 



164 MIND IS MATTER 

identification, and when about to be sent to 
Potter's Field, an apparition appeared stating 
that the corpse was his own body, detailing the 
circumstances of the death, that his name was 
" Charley LaCroix, of Dunnington, New Bruns- 
wick, and that Father Condat would claim the 
body ;"' which was done by the coroner tele- 
graphing to " Father Condat," not knowing 
there was any such person. 

The Brooklyn Daily Eagle speaks of epidemics 
in different parts of the country, the separate 
instances having no apparent connection with 
each other, of grave-robbing, bank defalcations, 
murders, incendiarism, rapes, etc. 

The New York Sun, February 8, 1883, records 
Andrew Coran, of Troy, as making many mirac- 
ulous cures by touch, and as being so success- 
ful as to make quarters at the American House 
for that purpose. 

St. James Gazette reports that Mr. Irving 
Bishop, found, blindfolded, a pin, by traversing 
three or four streets, holding by a piano wire 
the man who had hid the pin ; and that he 
found it inserted in a window sash on an upper 
balcony of a hotel. 

"J. F. S." in the New York Times, states 
that he awoke himself one night when dream- 
ing of his son in a distant city, with the expres- 
sion, "God have mercy on him," at the instant 



MAGNETIC LIFE. 165 

when he was helping an old lady from a burn- 
ing building. He also dreamed at another time 
of seeing a friend ascend into heaven at the 
time that the friend was dying. 

" Mr. Stuart Cumberland, the mind-reader, has been 
trying his gift on certain members of the House of 
Commons, in the smoking room of that institution. 
He asked Mr. Gladstone to think of some particular 
number, and after this was done, Mr. Cumberland 
guessed that it was 3G6; this guess was correct. An- 
other distinguished person thought of the number 
41,049, which Mr. Cumberland guessed also. He made 
no mistake in the series of experiments." — Harper's 
Weekly. 

The theory is worth examining into, that the 
magnetism in the oxygen and the iron particles 
in" the blood, with their polarity, are as much 
the cause of the blood circulation as the mus- 
cular pumping of the heart. It is doubtful if 
the fibrous strength of the heart is sufficient 
alone for so much mechanical force. There is 
some contractile power in the heart, receiving it 
from ancTco- operating with the magnetic power, 
that is attracting and propelling between the 
positive red blood and the negative venous blood 
and the outward air, and the bulkhead of mus- 
cular power through the lungs. The blood, 
probably, to some degree, carries its propelling 
and attracting force along with it. If this view 
is correct, it is another item respecting the agency 
of magnetism or electricity in human existence. 
Our scale-and- measure scientists cannot aid 



166 MIND IS MATTER. 

us hi these speculations by their cruciblea and 
microscopes. The laboratories of nature are 
finer than theirs. Their chemistry is yet crude. 
There is an occult transformation of the known 
elements into ultimate life- principle. There 
seems to be some degree of convertibility be- 
tween oxygen gas and electricity. The two are 
always present together in the human system 
and have similar effects on it. They have the 
same taste. Oxygen comes to the tissues of 
the physiology through the roundabout way 
of vegetation and digestion, as well as by in- 
spiration. 

"It was the flame experiments which led to the dis- 
covery of the magnetic property of oxygen and of the 
dia-magnetic properties of t\\ mosphere, air, nitrogen, 
hydrogen, coal gas, etc." — Prof. H. W. Pepper. 

Is not the oxygen thus converted, through 
the digestion and air cells, into nerve-fluid % 
Dr. A. E. Stevens, of Philadelphia, has remarked 
that electricity is abstracted from the blood in 
the arteries and stored in the corpus callosum. 
We know that organ to be the citadel of the 
consciousness, that it crowns the trunk of the 
nerves, and joins the sensory and motory nerves 
to the cerebrum which encases it. May not the 
infinitely elastic oxygen prove to be the infinite 
ether compressed by gravitation ? "All elements 
are from one," Oxygen and electricity are in 



x 



/ 



MACNETIC LIFE. 167 

the "all." The oxygen atom is larger fifteen 
miles high than it is in a laboratory. All diges- 
tion, breathing, and animal chemistry seem to 
converge in the one function of manufacturing 
or gathering of electricity, or the equivalent, 
which is the crown and ultimate of physiology. 
The atmosphere, which is composed mainly of 
oxygen and nitrogen gases, carries to the blood 
vitalizing substance and force. Oxygen is the 
only magnetic gas ; nitrogen is not magnetic at 
all. The red corpuscles of the blood, which 
largely contain iron, coming from the venous 
duct to the membrane of the lung cells, attract 
the oxygen by its magnetic property through 
the pores of the cell walls that are too small to 
let the corpuscles of blood get through into the 
cell cavities. Oxygen is found in the blood for 
a short time after it leaves the lung cells. If it 
is so for only a "short time," whither has it 
gone ? Has it not become resolved and mingled 
with the blood elements into vital force, or 
nerve force, or animal tissue ? What do histol- 
ogists call that substance that is neither blood, 
electricity, nor oxygen, but is the result of all 
three, just before it is formed into tissue ? Has 
there been any conversion of oxygen into nerve 
fluid? Its magnetic properties would seem to 
indicate that it will follow the law of universal 
relation and conversion. But little nitrogen 



168 MIND IS MATTER. 

passes the walls of the cells into the blood ; on 
the contrary, nearly as much nitrogen is expired . 
as is inspired, and carbonic acid gas diffuses 
from the venous blood through the cell walls, 
and takes the place of the ox}^gen that has left 
the cell cavity and passed through the cell walls 
into the blood, carrying its electricity with it, 
which probably adds impetus to the onward 
current of the blood and gives force to the 
heart. The atmosphere and the lungs thus, 
by magnetic attraction and repulsion, probably ? 
aid the heart in circulation. There being no 
valves in the lung passages, there is no con- 
tractile or forcing power to push the air through 
these millions of cell walls into the blood capil- 
aries. If there were, then the nitrogen also 
would go through the walls into the blood as 
freely as the oxygen. Thus it is clear that the 
oxygen is attracted through the walls or mem- 
branes of the cells by its well known magnetic 
affinity with the iron in the blood, sometimes 
in this instance called "chemical affinity." Mag- v^ 
netism is only an intense degree of molecular 
affinity. Magnetism or electricity will yet be ./ 
called the soul of chemistry. It is the vitality of 
the atmosphere — the direct life supply. It is that 
which moves the heart, the world, the Universe, 
and which can be none other than the direct 
hand and will of God. " The breath of life'' is 



MAGNETIC LIFE. 169 

a pregnant phrase. Electricity is in the oxygen 
of the air, and it is that which passes the lung 
cell walls into the blood and gives life. 

It is a worthy proposition that in the voice 
there is an electric as well as pneumatic phenom- 
enon. Probably there goes with the powerful 
notes of the canary bird a wave or current of 
electricity as well as breath from the vocal 
organs. The telephone speaks without air or 
anything like lungs. One human voice is more 
stirring or pungent than another's, and in pro- 
portion to its magnetism. Queens of song have 
not only articulation, but their tones come from 
the whole mind and nervous system ; they are 
ingrained in character and in every cell of the 
brain. The bronze bell does not emit the tones 
of the silver bell. The vocal charms of a 
prima donna will affect in accordance with her 
temperament. 

The essence, origin and substance of electricity 
have not been, to much extent, the subject of 
conjecture. Men have been satisfied with 
prosecuting its effects, only as they are in in- 
vestigating the activities of the soul without 
inquiring what the soul is. Our scientists and 
" physicists " won't go farther than they can 
see. They think their qualitative and quantita- 
tive yard sticks and scales are the be-all and the 
end-all. Matter may be refined beyond any of 



I 



170 MIND IS MATTER. 

our chemical powers of analysis and perception. 
The gold that has worn away from my watch 
; during twenty-five years, where is it ? May it 
: not have joined the electric fluid or the ether ? 
Physicists are ready to deny the materiality of 
electricity. They tell us it is a "force" or 
" mode of motion." There they stop. They 
might as well say nothing. Mode of motion 
of what f 

Instead of motion to successive molecules it 
acts as if it was something p^ssm^between^ciQ 
molecules. If the molecules were in motion 
th"ey~would in time be displaced and the medium 
removed or destroyed. Common sense tells us 
that the nerve work, the nerve axes and the tele- 
graphic wires are channels for the transmission 
of a quantity of substance from one place to 
another place, leaving minus at one place and 
adding plus at another place. We treat elec- 
tricity precisely in every detail as we do any 
other material power, steam, streams of water, 
pneumatic tubes, etc. Sometimes physicists 
will look wise and croak out that the effects of 
electricity are by a force operating on interven- 
ing molecules, as force is imparted through a 
succession of billiard balls, without moving 
them perceptibly. This is very fallacious in 
illustration. No motion can be imparted with- 
out passage and transit, If the electric force 



MAGNETIC LIFE. 1^1 

were not a substance, but imparted motion to 
molecules of matter, objective to itself, those 
molecules in the wire would have to move some, 
be changed in location, and they would all 
eventually be displaced. But they do not move 
any more than the pipe does that contains the 
stream of water, or steam, or compressed air. 
A train of cars starts with a jerk. We say it 
was material steam that did it. But when 
electricity does it, some say it is not material. 
Bah ! The reaction or force of any element dis- 
placed is in proportion to the force that displaces 
it. No current of electricity can be had but from 
another force. Forc e is a thing in motion. Be- 
cause we cannot see or analyze that thing chemi- 
cally is not a proof that that thing is not material. 
Common sense will say that although we do not 
understand the substance or materiality of elec- 
tricity, it yet is matter, because we can store it 
like steam, and put it in a six-ton car of pas- 
sengers, and it will run that car as well as a team 
of horses, until it has all run out like any other 
substance. The stream of electric fluid will run 
a factory or loaded cars, through a wire not as 
thick as my pen staff, for miles distant from 
where it is gathered. The more power we 
want the larger the wire, as in the mill flume, 
or steam boiler, or wind-mill. The more lights 
we must have, the larger the engine at the 



172 MIND IS MATTER. 

dynamo. The stream runs from the dynamo 
along the wire, through a rubber hose held in 
the hand of the driver down into the machinery 
of the car. If it were not a_stream of substance, 
but rather an immaterial force imparting agita- 
tion to successive molecules, it would impart its 
force to all molecules in every direction, like 
radii, and make concentric ring waves of force, 
like spatting the hand upon water. To regard 
electricity as common matter is deducible from 
all its phenomena in our use of terms in 
mechanical use and in its effects. It will cut a 
two-foot tree in two like a cleaver and plough 
holes in the ground "as big as a barrel.'' If it 
is immaterial force imparted to molecules, why 
is it confined like the edge of a knife or the 
point of a plough ? To say that it is non-mat- 
ter and yet produces these material effects is 
like the child w r ho believes a portly Santa Claus 
can come down a three inch chimney flue : and 
the physicist who says it is, has missed his 
calling, for he cannot realize an axiom. When 
we are answered that we don't know what mat- 
ter is, we reply, of course not ; but electricity is 
what matter is, whatever that is. In this argu- 
ment we do not need to know what matter is 
when we affirm its existence, any more than we 
need to know what God or the soul are, when 
we affirm their existence, or when we affirm 



MAGNETIC LIFE/ 173 

they are matter. As to the force behind elec- 
tricity, we will have to admit conscious volition 
in the atoms, the presence and body of the ever- 
living Grod. He is somewhere and with some- 
thing. He might as well be there with that as 
anything else. If electricity be not a ' 'thing " — an 
object, but is a mere mode of motion, induced 
by friction or erosion of something else, and if 
it is a physical power generated out of nothing, 
then mind-force may be nothing, and the mere 
result of bodily friction, ceasing with the cessa- 
tion of body. But the theory matches better 
with all phenomena and common sense that 
^ electricity is not generated by friction, but is a 
material substance gathered from space, 
diverted from its quiescent status by another 
force, its flow, or current, depending upon the 
force required to divert it, precisely as pneu- 
matics or hydraulic forces are put in motion. 
If soul does not reside in electricity it is hard to 
find what else it resides in. It is obliged to 
reside in some thing. In what ? 

Upon the materiality of electricity stands or 
falls the immortality of the soul. 

Is not electricity the universal ether, and is 
not the motion of the ether the current of 
electricity ? This would account for the physical 
and material character of the phenomena in all 
respects that attend electricity. Assuming that 



174 MIND IS MATTER. 

the_ ether exists everywhere, penetrates all 
things, and is the universal cosmic raw material 
and a compact mass of atoms, then, if any of it 
is displaced from its natural static condition, it 
will replace itself, find its compensating outlet, 
as air nils a vacuum. We find that the dynamo 
apparently produces a power out of nothing ; it 
consumes no raw material. But this cannot 
really be ; it takes the amount of power prac- 
tically to revolve a dynamo as is required from 
the dynamo to be used at the objective point. 
If a ten -horse power factory at A is to be run, a 
ten-horse power dynamo is required at B to fur- 
nish the current. An elevated tank of water 
required to turn a ten-horse power turbine 
wheel by hydraulic pressure would require a 
ten-horse power to elevate the water into that 
tank. Does this not tend to show us that elec- 
tricity is a universal substance and that the 
cause of its current is produced by a forcible 
displacement of its mass, the current having 
the same force that is required to displace it ? 
The matter is worth investigation, also, 
whether in the revolving dynamo there is not a 
principle of centrifugal force, flinging off some- 
thing gathered at the axis of the dynamo, as in 
the case of a rotary fan, and whether the grind- 
ing of the air between the armature and 
the magnet has not something to do with 



MAGNETIC LIFE. 175 

generating the current. ' Possibly the trans- 
verse alternating motion of a coil not having 
any centrifugal force, and in a vacuum, 
would produce no current. Let it be tried. The 
current of power generated in a jar of acid and 
metal is the molecular power of atoms, which, 
like the displacement in the clouds, is the direct 
hand and volition of GS-od. We cannot see nor 
demonstrate the fact that an all embracing 
intelligence is the cause of the energy of matter, 
but it is more axiomatic or self-evident that 
such is the case, than that inert dead matter 
moves itself mechanically. Ourselves are exam- 
ples and types of this intelligent power over 
matter. " I think therefore I exist." The inherent 
activity of matter proves an all-embracing God 
as the first cause. The human mind by its 
construction and nature cannot come to any 
other conclusion except by perverse will. 



"I therefore contend that all things were made out 
of electricity, which is not only an invisible and 
imponderable substance but a primeval and eternal 
matter." — J. B. Bods. 

"I do know this. I was in Paris during the cholera 
plague, when hundreds of people were dying about me 
each day. The only precaution that I used was to 
wear silk underclothes and double-soled silk stock- 
i ings, thus making myself a non-conductor and keeping 
*■ my natural electricity imprisoned. Thus guarded, I 
went everywhere with perfect impunity, supremely 
confident that I could not catch the disease. 



176 MIND IS MATTER. 

"Do you not think that your imagination may have 
had something to do with it ? 

" I believe that the effect of the imagination upon 
the physical system is sometimes powerful enough to 
counteract the effects of disease, but I am confident 
that in my case it was the silk." — {Clipping.) 

- If Christ had whispered from Jerusalem to 
Galilee and received a whisper back, as we now 
do between Brooklyn and Boston, it would have 
been ranked to this day with his miracles had 
we not discovered the conveying power of elec- 
tricity. We are not at the limit of electrical 
discovery. 



CHAPTER VII. 

SPIRITUALITY. 



The persistency of psycho-matter — Spiritualism — Dr. Abbott — 
Spiritual influence depends upon susceptibility — Sir Walter 
iteott — Difference of specific gravity in organized beings — 
The corporeal soul — A chemical soul, President Basliford, Dr. 
Taylor, Goethe — Dr. Talmage and Dr. Elliot Coues on the 
nearness of spirits to us — Authentic phenomena. 

" It is not probable that either the mental atom or its 
compound molecule, if such molecule exists, can ever 
become directiy visible to us through the bodily senses. 
Many gases are invisible, yet they possess most positive 
physical characters. The sky ether is invisible, yet 
Professor Jevons characterizes it as adamantine." — 
Antoinette Brown Blackwell. 



As to the visibility of the " mental atom," the 
above writer may reflect that it is not good 
experience to limit the possibilities of evolution, 
or of scientific and philosophic research. That 
the mental atom is seen is sustained in the Bible 
in the use of the term "angels" and "spirits." We 
cannot see the expansive vapor within a glass 
engine, that it is pushing and working until it 
escapes into the air and is condensed into steam. 
We cannot see the electricity all about us until 
its flow is interrupted. So the force in the brain 



173 MIND IS MATTER. 

and along the nerves of the draft-horse might be 
discovered by sudden condensation, as in 
exposing it to the air ; for no man can yet prove 
that the nerve fluid is not the very soul. Dr. 
Waller, St. Mary's Hospital, London, speaks of 
electric currents caused by the pulsation of the 
heart, and of the heart as a latent electric 
battery. 

"The horizon of matter, which has been thought to 
rest over attenuated hydrogen, may extend to infiniie 
reaches beyond, including stuffs or substances which 
have never been revealed to the senses. Beings fash- 
ioned of this attenuated substance might walk by our 
side unseen, nor casta shadow in the noon-day sun." 
— Hudson Tuitle. 

Man may create or destroy empires, set in 
motion causes for all time, command or destroy 
the world, sweep the universe with his calcula- 
tion, harness the elements, and yet his bodily 
life is annihilated as easily as the killing of a 
gnat or wiping the down from a butterfly's 
wing. But is so fragile and uncertain a thing 
as the body indispensable to ultimate human 
plan and usefulness, or do our minds go on un- 
harmed, our influence still permeating the liv- 
ing by invisible but just as potent powers as 
when in the body? We often hear when a 
strong man dies that "His spirit is with us." 
That saying has come about by our instincts 
that it is more than a figure of speech. Not 



SPIRITUALITY. 179 

only have we a memory of his example and of 
his requirements, but we are compelled by an 
unseen power to continue his work. Are de- 
parted souls a real force in human life, suffus- 
ing our souls with ideas and impulses ? A man 
may sway a senate and yet one slip of a heart 
valve in an instant paralyzes all his powers of 
expression only; he falls to the floor apparently 
dead and his body is buried. But can it be 
thought that his mind-force is so quickly an- 
nihilated ? If he cannot speak, may not he be 
conscious, and may not that consciousness 
gather itself to its citadel that wastes not ? A 
great soul after death perhaps works as directly 
upon the minds of his posterity as a living man 
does. Bodily death effects no change in the 
mind. From the time the physical senses begin 
to be benumbed, the soul begins to be disen- 
thralled. 

We maintain our individuality ; we are given 
faculties and instincts of defense, love of life, 
memory ; and yet the body is always wasting, 
changing, dying. It^renew T s every seven years 
or oftener ; but the mind, character, and ego 
are continuous. So may not the mind, or con- 
sciousness, cleave to, and be part of this unde 
composable nerve fluid, or psychic substance, 
right on through all physical changes and dis- 
solution, there being no lapse of consciousness, 



180 MIND IS MATTER. 

and the mind being able to witness the final 
decay of the body as it does its progressive 
decay. 

" I see no scientific reason for doubting that disem- 
bodied spirits affect man both for good and for evil, as 
men affect one auother." — Dr. Lyman 8. Abbott. 

Of the so-called spiritualism of the age the 
writer knows nothing from observation, hav- 
ing never seen a ghost, nor a person who has — 
as the writer believes. But this essay rationally 
tends to sustain the spiritualistic theory in part ; 
not the materialism of it, but the Christianity 
of it. 

There is a wide difference in the acuteness of 
our physical senses, and we cannot tell where 
the dividing line is between them and our in- 
tuitions. Some have said all senses, all percep- 
tions, are resolvable into one sense — that of the 
touch ; the touch of molecular waves from ob- 
jects through the nerves upon the sensorium in 
the brain, and through that the touch of the 
soul. May not the soul in the sensorium touch 
or be touched by objective things directly, 
through " molecular waves *' without the inter- 
mediation of the common senses? Are the 
ordinary senses our only means of perception 
with the outer world? This psychic substance, 
both bodied and disembodied, now unknown, 
may yet be felt and seen as an objective thing 



SPIRITUALITY. 1S1 

when we shall have the proper conditions, sen- 
sations, and perceptions to understand, its lan- 
guage. The spectroscope is the most delicate 
instrument devised for the detection of matter. 
If there is a magnetic stream, may not there be 
a mind stream ; and can the spectroscope detect 
either stream or the electric current ? We have 
not perceptions alike ; there are clairvoyants 
and mind-readers whom the world has been 
compelled to recognize. We do not see nor re • 
cognize in any way the powerful element of 
electricity that surrounds us until by some 
known law it concentrates into the lightning's 
flash. We do not all see the magnetic current, 
but some people do. The auroral light is prob- 
ably it. All do not see the east wind, but some 
feel it most sensibly. Magnetic instruments 
can be made so delicate as to register the 
approach of a man's hand at a distance of several 
inches. May not some natures be so organized 
as to register this unseen psychic force with 
certainty and practicality ; and may not that 
cognition produce its subjective impression and 
image upon the mind ? This immortal sub- 
stance is cognizable only to a certain develop- 
ment of spiritual perceptive faculties. 

This subtle, all pervasive, magneto-mental 
contact, if studied and developed more, would 
open all bosoms to each other, as God knows us 



182 MIND IS MATTER. 

all. There can be no secrets in nature ; all 
things are related by law. But we are all dull. 
Instinct and intuition are not guesses ; they are 
contact ; they are the unerring lines of teleg- 
raphy ; and they can no more give false regis- 
tration than can the sun. We fancy the isola- 
tion and hiding of individuality, as simple- 
minded children sometimes do in their trans- 
parent dissimulation. Be good and we shall be, 
without effort, known of all to be so. If we 
are bad at heart, no assiduous, artful practice 
can hide it ; for the soul radiates by material 
law. 

Although the most horrible, sudden and 
agonizing calamities overtake individuals and 
communities, there is never an instant of warn- 
ing ; the consternation of sudden knowledge 
comes by the channel of physical means. A 
statesman falls dead at a banquet under circum- 
stances making it a national misfortune, while 
at that instant his family are in a distant city 
in enjoyment of social festivities, all unapprised 
of their bereavement. The surprise of an army, 
the thief in the night, the masked battery, the 
stroke of the assassin are not usually heralded 
by any warning voice to the victims. But all 
this is not inconsistent with spirit influences. 
The soul's attention is always too engrossed 
with mortality ; spiritual laws are not physical 



SPIRITUALITY. 183 

laws. They relate to each other, but they are 
remote. They cannot be expected to impress 
each other in the natural course of law, except 
under the most favorable conditions. To know 
these spirit influences there must be, as in the 
most sensuous communications, a degree of 
attention and receptivity. To feel spirit influ- 
ences our souls must be thrown open sensitively 
and passively to inviting conditions, as in gentle 
sleep or the calm contemplation of solitude. 
They are the "still small voice." The intense 
clear memory of a departed friend, may be an 
indication of that friend's spiritual presence, 
personally, although physical illustration is not 
necessary. 

"I gather this — that the spiritual body is real, is 
tangible, is visible, is human, but that we shall be 
changed." — The Gates Ajar. 

It is no answer to our proposition of spiritual 
touch, and action and reaction between our 
living selves and' from our departed friends to 
us, that we so many times fail of sensible proof 
of these things, and that they are so infrequent 
as to amount to no more than mere coinci- 
dences. Absorbed, covered up and enveloped 
as we are in mortality, it is only natural that 
the delicacy of spirit-essence does not arouse us. 
Some of us are as coarse as brutes. Why don't 
we all feel the power of the terrestrial magnetic 



184 MIND IS MATTER. 

current, which is a physical force ? The moral 
and intellectual dullness of the brute is insen- 
sible to spirit voices. So are many of us at dif- 
ferent times. To be influenced spiritually we 
must be taken either when off our guard, when 
the mind is balanced finely, and open to this 
spirit aggressiveness, or when trained to the 
principle by sorrow, bereavement, or moral cul- 
ture. We are not sensible to the magnetic 
stream north and south, but if our bodies were 
full of magnetic needles we would be. Insom- 
nists are sensitive to it who try to sleep while 
lying north and south, because each corpuscle of / 
blood is an active iron and oxygen magnet, 
keeping the circulation and friction of conscious- 
ness active in that position. Magnetic needles 
can be made so feeble as not to respond to the 
terrestial current, and yet attract each other. 

If the so-called materialization of spirits be 
not real sensible objects, then the visions of them 
may be molecular subjective impressions of 
spiritual objects that are invisible to the physi- 
cal eye. Such phenomena are sustained by so 
respectable an authority as the Bible. 

" The spirit of the departed dead, I am convinced, 
have a certain influence over our minds." — Bishop 
Bowman. 

"The soul is a living organism," — Drummond, 



SPIRITUALITY. 185 

"What we call soul, the immortal man, is not a 
metaphysical nonentity, but an organ ism more perfect 
than the outward body." — E. A. bears. 

The establishment of spiritualism may not be 
so much a question of new phenomena as of 
human development. We are progressing, and 
we may yet discover a universal and certain 
rule by which we can interpret the "still small 
voice. " We are now too coarse, or too in flamed 
with bigotry. The Egyptian hieroglyphics 
were a mystery to the world until the Rosetta 
stone was found. Then all was plain. Some 
philosophers may yet give us a practical and 
universal key to these angel voices about us. 

"The theory of an indivisable mind-body is becom- 
ing the accepted hypothesis of one class of scientific 
thinkers. That every mind may have a more perma- 
nent ethered body, which mediates between it and its 
grosser organism, cannot involve a shadow of scien- 
tific absurdity. In mind, physical and mental proper- 
ties inhere together in mutual dependence." — A. B. 
Blackwell 

Walter Scott in his book on Demon ology and 
Witchcraft uses this language: 

" The abstract possibility of apparitions must be 
admitted by every one who believes in a Deity and 
his superintending omnipotence. No man can read 
the Bible or call himself a Christian without believing 
that the Deity, to confirm the faith of the Jews, and to 
overcome and confound the pride of the heathen, 
wrought in the land many miracles, using either good 
spirits or fallen angels." 

That there are unseen social forces is easy to 
admit - } but a more interesting question is 



186 MIND IS MATTER. 

whether those forces communicate between 
mind and mind, or spirit and spirit directly, by 
shooting off and transmitting a part of their 
own substance, or by vibrating upon another or 
odic substance that exists between mind and 
mind. How can spirits in heaven communicate 
with one another if there is no bodily media ? 
To claim that the physiology is the only medium 
of communication is to give away the whole 
doctrine of after-life and make man die like a 
tree. There is a direct influence and communi- 
cation of mind and mind, as shown in the con- 
stant coincidence of thought so familiar to every 
human experience. These harmonies of thought 
and action among people are not causeless coin- 
cidences, like the striking of two independent- 
clocks constructed on similiar principles of 
mechanics ; they are like electric clocks that 
are all run by one current of electricity. 
Human isolation is abhorrent to experience and 
instinct. Strike out all life but one man and 
he probably would die as surely as if the sun 
were striken out, unless he recognized sympa- 
thetically God's presence. Society elevates and 
improves the species ; deprivation of society, or 
a few confined together, deteriorates the intel- 
lectuality, as intermarriage of families deterior- 
ates body and mind, or as stagnation deteriorates 
everything. Cynicism is a soul-disease that 



SPIRITUALITY. 187 

withdraws the man from his atomic contact 
with his race and shortens his life, unless the 
Moss is compensated by his atomic relation with 
/|\ God, the source of all spiritual supply. Spirit 
is something, not nothing. " It is not good for 
man to be alone." 

But with the question of the objective and 
sensuous recognition of the departed spirit, 
"materialization," it is not necessary to deal 
fully here. Scientifically there may be a de- 
parted spirit, the form and shape of which we 
know not, that may be discerned or felt or 
realized by the mind of mortals objectively, 
not by the physical eyes, but by spiritual 
eyes ; not subjectively, but objectively, in the 
sense that spirit is a refinement of matter. 

We are "sown a natural body and raised a 
spiritual body." If this spiritual body exists 
after death, why may it not be seen ? Why may 
not this nerve essence recognize its own kindred 
essence by direct lines, without the aid of the 
optics, by some occult law of its own ? 

" What little we know we get through the ear or the 
eye or the nostrils or the taste or the touch ; but these 
angels of God have no physical encasement and they 
are all senses. A wall five feet thick is not solid to 
them. Through it they go without disturbing a flake 
of mortar or a crystal of sand. They are at every 
place. They are more numerous on the earth than the 
human race ; and more than than that, there is a 
guardian nngel personally for you. I used to think 
that was all fanciful. I said to myself, ' That is a 



188 MIND IS MATTER. 

very good theory, but I can't quite believe it certain..' 
From this present study of angology I find it positively 
stated that every soul has a guardian angel." — T. De 
Witt Talmage. 

It is a fallacy, like that of an "idea spirit/'* 
to suppose that all physiologies or bodies are 
alike in material density. There is a difference 
in animal bodies of fibre and weight to the 
cubic inch, a difference in physical specific grav- 
ity. If there be organized beings on other 
planets, Neptune being lighter than water, its 
men would be correspondingly lighter than we. 
The same law would prevail on other spheres, 
planetoids, or nebulous centers, to all degrees 
of subtility, whether fluid, gaseous, ethereal or 
electrical. Thus a "spiritual body" is in anal- 
ogy with known physical organism. If, in the 
nebulous spaces, there be intelligent beings, they 
must have forms quite gaseous. Germs are 
said to be "floating" in the air. The following 
is an approximate grading of the lightness of 
men upon our planets, according to the ordinary 
estimate of the density of those planets, going 
from the sun : A man would be one-fifth as 
heavy on Earth as on Mercury, one-tenth as 
heavy on Jupiter as on Mercury, one-twentieth 
as heavy on Neptune as on Mercury. If 
human beings occupy Neptune, they would be 
nearly six times as light as men are on the 
earth. And if there are planets beyond Nep- 



SPIRITUALITY. 189 

tune, nearly nebulous or gaseous, they would 
require correspondingly lighter bodies. And so 
on, there might be, from our known analogy, 
realms requiring volatile or even electric bodies. 
And thus the ethereal spaces may require 
etherial bodies. The following gradation of 
planetary densities is quoted : Mercury, 19.56 ; 
Venus, 5.22; Earth, 5.66; Mars, 5.39; Jupiter, 
1.68; Saturn, 0.36; Uranus, 0.69; Neptune, 0.97. 

" All flesh is not the same flesh; but there is one kind 
of flesh of man, another flesh of beasts, another of 
fishes, and another of birds ; there are also celestial 
bodies and bodies terrestrial. " — Paul. 

Dr. John Trowbridge, in the Popular Science 
Monthly, has these words : 

" The doctrine of the same existence of spirit after 
physical death, seems to be not foreign to the scientific 
ideas of the conservation of force, which have now 
obtained such complete supremacy in the science of 
physics. The idea of a great source of life and mind, 
the prototype of our physical sun * * * is not 
inconsistent with the doctrine of the New Testament. 
I think by this is meant the Holy Ghost." 

With the idea that spirit is an Ci immaterial 
substance" one can hardly have patience to 
deal. It is a merely thoughtless assumption, a 
pseudo idea. It is inconceivable and illogical. 
Some writer has said — " Whatever is beyond 
the reach of our physical senses is immaterial." 
Whose " physical senses," pray ? Some of us 
are very dull. If '* material" and "immate- 



190 MIND IS MATTER. 

rial " are only relative terms, let us be more 
exact and absolute in the use of our words here. 
All of us are advancing in perception ; we are 
progressing in the discovery and analysis of 
new elements. A higher order of refinement 
may yet perceive spirit forms. 

"The last triumph of chemistry, says Rothe, will he 
a spiritual body, perfectly responsive to our will and 
possessing immortality." — President J. W. Bashford 
{Wesley an University). 

" No prejudice cf the vulgar can be more unphilo- 
sophical than is that which would obstruct for a 
moment our acquiescence in the belief of a future 
transfusion of human nature with its individuality into 
a new and more refined corporeal structure. " — Dr. Isaac 
Taylor. 

All that is not sentience in the Universe is 
material. There is no middle ground. If God 
and spirit operate upon matter, they, too, are 
matter ; that is, sentience embodied in ethereal 
bodies. That sentience may be denominated 
the God, but the ether is there with Him, 
although their connection is incomprehensible 
to us. 

"We cannot think of substance save in terms that 
imply material properties." — Flemming. 

Aristotle described soul as "The first form of 
an organized body that has life." How can he 
give" form " and " body " to an idea 1 This corre- 
sponds with the language in the Bible: "And 



SPIRITUALITY. 191 

God formed man of dust of the ground and 
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, 
and he became a living soul." It does not say 
that God breathed into his nostrils an idea or 
consciousness, but "breach." How can mere 
sentience have body, under the ideal phil- 
osophy ? If a man's immortal part were under- 
stood by the writers of the Bible to be pure 
idealism, there has been a woeful and mislead- 
ing use of language in the words " angels,*' 
4 'spirits," "body," in connection with that 
which is "raised." The Bible writers were the 
most ultra of spiritualists. When Christ was 
seen by his disciples walking on the water, it is 
said they were sore afraid, because they thought 
they had seen a "spirit." How could a spirit 
be "seen " if it was only an idea or conscious- 
ness ? 

The spirit of the Holy Ghost invoked by relig- 
ious devotees is a real thing, not an imagination 
or reverie. A sturdy man, a Methodist, upon 
his knees, at a religious revival, as his stream- 
ing eyes were lifted and hands outstretched 
towards heaven, averred that he was receiving 
" shock after shock of the Holy Ghost." If the 
Holy Ghost is an "idea" only, how can it 
" shock " bodily ? Is the bodily swaying move- 
ment in a revival a subjective conformity, or 
from an outside force I 



192 MIND IS MATTER. 

Following are quoted opinions of writers as 
to the physical or substantial essence of this soul 
force, and also common phenomena tending to 
prove it. Goethe makes this statement, which 
is common to the experience of us all : 

" One soul may have a decided influence upon others 
merely by means of this silent presence, of which I 
could relate many instances. It has often happened 
to me that when I have been walking with an ac- 
quaintance and have had a lively image of something 
in my mind he has at once begun to speak of that 
i very thing. We all have something of an electrical 
and magnetic force within us, and we put forth, like 
the magnet itself, an attractive or repulsive power 
according as we come in contact with something sim- 
ilar or dissimilar." 

Gregory says, " Animal magnetism, mesmer- 
ism, electro-biology, and electro-psychology, 
are all the same." Mesmerism, which is the 
influence, or supposed physical influence of 
one will over another, is believed in by millions 
of the most intelligent people. Esdaile says, 
" Mesmerism is a natural power of the human 
body." Paracelus holds that in the human 
frame exists something of the sideral nature, 
something derived from the stars, and that the 
soul is united to the body by an animal fluid. 
Teste makes this remark : " Here, then, we see 
beyond all dispute the will of one individual 
transmitting itself in silence to another individ- 
ual who is not aware of his presence." He says, 



SPIRITUALITY. 193 

"What is the vehicle of this will?" and an- 
swers, "The magnetic fluid." Mesmer says, 
"There exists a mutual influence between the 
heavenly bodies and the earth, and between the 
earth and its living bodies, a fluid universally 
diffused and admitting no vacuum, whose sub- 
tility is beyond all comprehension." Ashburner 
said, " Od is a cosmical force radiating from 
star to star, permeating the universe, and an 
element differing from both electricity and 
magnetism." Can this be soul-stuff? Newman 
speaks of the fluid used in fascination as a 
" nervous vapor." And Greorgy, ' ' If odic fluid 
exists, it traverses space just as light does, and 
distance is of no importance ; it is probably 
the medium of the transmission of sympathy." 
Sergeant Cox declares, "Psychic force consists 
of a material essence that executes the command 
of the will over matter." Denton is put down, 
"Eadiant forces pass from us continually, as 
truly as light proceeds from the stars. A 
speaker reaches his audience by invisible ways 
that penetrate to the interior sense." Evans 
writes : " The mind is a spiritual substance, and 
there goes from it a sphere that surrounds it, 
and it is a radiant force like light or heat." Dr. 
Caldwell, speaking of military eloquence, used 
this direct language : 



194 MIND IS MATTER, 

"The brain and muscles of the speaker must be 
indirectly connected with the brains of the auditors, 
else it would be impossible for them to produce an 
impression ; nor can they be thus connected except by 
a subtile, intervening ether, of which our senses take 
no cognizance, but which is in actual contact with 
the brain of each party ; the atmosphere is too gross 
for an agency so penetrating and refined. This fluid 
is secreted by the brain from the arteries and is thrown 
off by the brain ; and on no other theory can we form 
an intelligible conception of the peculiar effects of 
oratory. " 

And now we come to a man who declares 
this force can be seen. Dr. Ashburner, in his 
translation of Dr. Eeichenbach' s work on odic 
force, says he has made a great many experi- 
ments with highly sensitive persons, and con- 
tinues : 

"There is an imponderable, material substance, 
emanating from the mind, directed by the will, that is 
so effective as a material power that it may be polarized 
and imparted from one thing to another. After a long 
course of experimenting on sensitive individuals I 
have come to the conclusion that a force which is a 
material agent, attended by or consisting of a colored 
l ight , emanates from the brain of a man w hen Jhe 
tVinks, that his will can direct its impingement, and 
that it is a motive power. 1 have known at least fifty 
people who have seen a gray, silvery or blue light 
emanating from mj T hands, and that a great many per- 
sons that have been put in mesmeric sleep by me have 
seen a blue light issuing in copious streams from my 
eyes when concentrating thought in the act of volition 
or study." 

This, if true, has not yet been imparted to be 
practical general knowledge of mankind, nor to 



SPIRITUALITY. 195 

their credence. But there have been discovered 
too many wonderful facts to gainsay it without 
reason. 

" Then from those cavernous eyes, 
Pale flashes seemed to rise, 
As when the northern skies, 
Gleamed in December." 

— Longfellow's Skeleton in Armour. 

Evans wrote, CI A man imparts his own 
thoughts and will silently and unintentionally, 
as a stove imparts its heat. " 

We cannot suppose the mind's only means of 
enlightenment to be through the ordinary phy- 
sical senses, nor that our social harmony 
depends upon the conventional signs we have 
adopted in speech and writing. Mind was 
before language ; consciousness is superior to 
expression. Human minds have an occult 
power of understanding each other and working 
upon each other, besides ways commonly sup- 
posed. Is there not more in the bond of Chris- 
tian fellowship than in the doctrine ? There is a 
" sacred fire." Is there not more in soldierly 
gallantry than military law or personal will? 
There is the influence of the charging line that 
lifts the timid into momentary heroism. Could 
Demosthenes, as an editor, have aroused the 
Athenians ? Do the recited speeches of Clay, 
or Henry, by the most approved elocutionists, 
excite as those orators did ? Without some law 



196 MIND IS MATTER. 

of contact, how can there be simultaneousness 
among masses of people acting upon impulse ? 
Does the perfect accord of a hundred musi- 
cians depend upon exact independent similari- 
ties in each of them, or does one mind actually 
imbue the whole mass, and all harmonize with 
each other for the time being by some kind of 
contact ? It is said that to strike a chord on a 
liarp in a room where there are a thousand 
harps, will produce a similar chord from all. 
Do we not thus radiate magnetically upon each 
other our different moods of humor, and with- 
out speech, look or contact ? Mental enthu- 
siasms are material phenomena or atomic fer- 
mentations and growths. A fact or error is a 
real seed, a lodgment of an atomic germ of good 
or evil in the soul-fluid, which fructifies or 
spreads as yeast does, literally and physically, 
not figuratively, making passion. The sight of 
an object of affection often ripens into a disease 
or fever with persons and with societies, that 
has its run like any physical disease, leaving its 
habitat after a season with various results. So 
of all mental enthusiams. They can be pre- 
vented or controlled by the forewarning know- 
ledge of this law, and the mind and interests 
thus left unwounded by discontinuing the 
mental soil and moisture that is furnished by 
attention, by disturbing and scattering the 



SPIRITUALITY. 197 

atomic germ rootlets, and by absence from the 
cause of excitation. In love, as with the mag- 
net, proximity is relative influence, but contact 
is absolute power. This doctrine is applicable 
to the nurture of all good, and the extirpation 
of all evil. Keep away from evil. Keep near 
to good. These precepts will apply to social 
epidemics of crime, fashion, politics, religions, 
and war. Religion and war have been common 
companions and are very infectious. As our 
bodies are susceptible to direct physical con- 
tagion without our knowing the sources, so our 
minds are influenced by contagion ; and why 
one man has that religion or that politics, 
having received it while his brain was negative, 
or is in this or that mood of ambition or despon- 
dency, purity or sensualism, anger or kindness, 
is much the same as why one has the yellow 
fever and another escapes, or why one has this 
disease and another that. There is an aggregate 
mind that works upon the individual mind ; 
and a force of public opinion that warps juries 
unconsciously in their verdicts, and judges in 
their rulings. Every separate community has 
a center of mental force ; it may break out 
mechanically in expression through one individ- 
ual or another without definable cause, as crystals 
form here or there, or as rifts of sand are made 
in this place or that by the floods. We can see 



198 MIND IS MATTER. 

how impulse and sensation not logic are the great 
moving causes of human conduct, and we get 
those original impulses by the slightest spiritual 
vibrations. We get the impressions, then the 
intellect adopts and confirms them, the will 
executes them, and we call them "original 
impulses." We see the people rushing blindly 
as brutes to shows and excursions, or at the 
beck and wand of political and ecclesiastical 
magicians. Few men and women stand aloof 
with calm feelings, self -poise, clear views, and 
originality of will. We are all inclined to fall 
in mechanically with popular motions. Observe 
the conduct of society, its utter passivity and 
credulity, merely animal, under the efforts of 
any audacious individual. A man needs only a 
spark of assurance and energy to get votes and 
money off this placer-mine — the public. All 
he needs is to be serene, confident, and persis- 
tent. The automatic rush of popular favor con- 
verges to one individual, as the winds or floods 
converge without definable cause into the 
whirlwind or the torrent, without judgment, 
and after its whim and force is spent in impulse 
the same individual cannot command his former 
respect, though he remains unchanged. Speak- 
ers, editors, politicians, statesmen and priests 
know this law and strike while the iron is hot. 
While a knowledge of it will put us upon our 



SPIRITUALITY. 199 

guard against the impositions and influences of 
society, it will also lead us to take the benefits 
of social psychic force with its sustaining influ- 
ence ; for the sun is not truer to the tender 
plant and seed buried in the cold earth, than is 
this lifting force of society to the soul of man, 
where he selects and adapts himself to its best. 
It is next to the spirit of the Almighty. We 
are magnets, but not insulated magnets. A 
medium of induction surrounds us to lead off 
our power, or to lead power into us from 
others. We must know this law to hold our 
own. We can see that as regards this element, 
which has so much to do with life, if indeed, it 
be not life itself, there has been but very little 
progress in human knowledge. We know that 
the action of the body evolves a personal elec- 
tricity that we ought to conserve ; we are 
helpless or passive as we lose that force, 
just as we are when we lose our animal heat or 
are exhausted by the labors of a day. When 
we have spent_our force we are in no condition 
to encounter other people. Just before a rain- 
storm, when the clouds concentrate electricity 
from the atmosphere, many people feel dis- 
tressed, feeble in circulation and action of the 
heart. After the storm, when the electricity is 
discharged back into the atmosphere, they are 
strong again. So animal electricity will leave 



200 MIND IS MATTER, 

negative people and accumulate in the crowd or 
the audience, leaving the negative person weak 
and sleepy ; or it leaves a negative person to 
help a strong person. We can cultivate posi- 
tiveness, throw out a personal influence of our 
own, and an effectiveness of character, which, 
if carried down and accumulated through a suc- 
cession of families, could produce a persona] 
influence so great, so far beyond our present 
degree, as to explain the magical power of 
ancient priests, kings, and chieftains over the 
uneducated mass. 
In Appleton's Encyclopedia are these words: 

"The highest professors of magic have always 
claimed it is fit only for kings and priests ; it requires 
superior intelligence, the severest study, and audacity 
which no peril can daunt, a will which ik» xtsistance 
can bend, and a discretion, devotion, and an habitual 
silence, undisturbed by the temptations of the world. 
The man who has demonstrated his fearlessness amid 
conflagration, tempest, shipwreck, and darkness, can 
terrify gnomes and sylphs and can invoke them." 

" I have had other evidence of, and have proved in 
other ways, the existence of the soul and its survival 
of the dissolution of the body, as a conscious individ- 
ual entity, capable of sustaining the functions of 
thinking, feeling, remembering, and willing on a 
higher plane, just as the physical body does on the 
material plane." — Dr. Eliot Cones. 

" There is a class of phenomena which makes me 
think that the spiritual and the heavenly world may, 
after a while, make a demonstration in this world 
which will bring all moral and spiritual things to a 
climax. Now, I am no Spiritualist ; but every intelli- 
gent man has noticed that there are strange and mys- 
terious things which indicate to him that perhaps the 



SPIRITUALITY. 201 

spiritual world is not so far off as sometimes we con- 
jecture, and that after a while from the spiritual and 
heavenly world there may be a demonstration upon our 
world for its betterment. We call it magnetism, or 
we call it mesmerism, or we call it electricity, because 
we want some term to cover up our ignorance. I do 
not know what that is. I never heard an audible 
voice from the other world. I am pursuaded of this, 
however, that the veil between this world and the next 
is getting thinner and thinner, and that perhaps after 
a while, at the call of God — not at the call of the 
Davenport brothers or Andrew Jackson Davis — some 
of the old Scriptural warriors, some of the spirits of 
other days, mighty for God, a Joshua or a Caleb or a 
David or a Paul, may come down and help us in this 
battle against unrighteousness." — Dr. T. De Witt 
Talmage. 

Kev. John McFarland, of Glasgow, a very con- 
servative theologian, has written the biography 
of a saintly lady, in which he recounts her vision 
of angels which occurred in the full strength of 
her intellect, just before her death. His belief 
in the phenomena is absolute, and he cites many 
instances. He uses this language : 

"Before the last breath is drawn, celestial visions 
may be granted to dying saints. On no other principle- 
can the transported looks, triumph language and 
direct intelligent address, with which godly persons 
have left this world, be interpreted." 

Our limits will not permit the narration of 
the many beautiful facts of this kind, having 
occurred within this exalted orthodox Scotch 
minister's experience. It is common knowledge 
that the dying seem to be " looking at some- 
thing," as exhibited upon their features and by 



202 MIND IS MATTER. 

their emotions, in accordance with their age and 
experience. 

The Colorado Bepublic speaks of a little child 
two and a half years old, who daily made ex- 
clamations about seeing its little sister and 
grandmother who had died. 

The New York Tribune of July, 1883, contains 
an account of two ladies in Louisville who were 
intimate friends, but separated at some dis- 
tance, dying at the same time, and each one 
expressing her conviction that the other was 
dying. 

From a lecture by Eev. J. Cooke : 

"Louisa May Alcott, watching with her mother 
by the deathbed of a dying and dearly loved sister, 
says, when the end came, she distinctly saw a delicate 
mist rising from the dead body. Her mother, too, saw 
this strange thing. When they asked the physician 
about it, he said, 'You saw life departing visibly 
from the physical form.' This was at Concord, 
remember, where there is no superstition. Professor 
Hitchcock, says he was present at the bedside of a 
dying friend. The eyes closed ; the breath ceased ; 
he was dead. Suddenly the eyes opened, light came 
back to them, then a look of surprise, admiration, in- 
expressible bliss ; then suddenly passed away. Dr. 
Oliver Wendel Holmes, in the preface to a book on 
visions, says, with all a scientist's conservatism, that 
his friend, Dr. Clarke, said that once while watching 
by a deathbed, the impression was conveyed to him 
that 'something ' — that is the word he uses — passed from 
the body into space." 

" The general, or it may be termed, the universal 
belief of the inhabitants of the earth, in the existence 
of spirits, separated from the incumbrances and in- 
capacities of the body, is grounded on the conscious- 



SPIRITUALITY. 203 

ness of divinity that speaks in our bosoms and demon- 
strates to all men, except the few who are hardened to 
the celestial voice, that there is within us a portion of 
the divine substance which is not subject to the law 
of death and dissolution. * * * The conviction 
that such an indestructible essence exists must infer the 
existence of many millions of spirits who have not 
been annihilated, though they have become invisible 
to mortals who still hear, see and perceive only by 
means of the imperfect organs of humanity." — Walter 
Scott. 

The susceptibility and sensitiveness of the 
mental sensorium in the brain is beyond our 
comprehension. Its humors are so exquisitely 
balanced that influences from an illimitable dis- 
tance, and of an infintesimal refinement, may 
set to work impressions and impulses within us 
that progress into volition and passion. Elec- 
tricity acts by induction, without mechanical 
contact. From the telephone, speech leaps from 
wire to wire; the electric arc or loop can flame 
out, not only totally dissevered from the dy- 
namo, but by induction through space. Possi- 
bly the mind conveys its condition directly by 
the same method to other minds. Where a force 
acts thus outwardly, it is well known that we 
can fix no limit to at least some degree of its in- 
fluence. Thus, taking the sensitiveness of the 
human mind, when free to susceptibility, and 
presuming its electric nature, we can compre- 
hend clairvoyance, mind-reading, etc., however 
much those philosophies have been degraded, and 



204 MIND IS MATTER. 

can also, from the many social phenomena that 
we accept, reason out that the body of the mind 
is electric. And if the mind be etherial or elec- 
tric and lives after bodily dissolution, we can 
easily comprehend the influence of the departed 
over us when we open ourselves sympathetically 
to them, and that they may be literally our guar- 
dian angels. If the mind uses electricity as its 
immediate agent, a theory now generally accept- 
ed, then the ever beautiful and interesting phe- 
nomena of the magnet and glass is worthily 
illustrative of it. Almost every steel or iron bar 
has some magnetic attraction in it. With some 
bars this force is scarcely effective upon the most 
delicately poised needle. Yet a small segment 
of watch spring, resting upon a needle's point, 
that can be deflected by a speck of dust and 
scarcely made to revolve by a weak bar of iron, 
will be made to revolve under a goblet to the 
same effect by the same bar outside. Philosophy 
will not attempt to limit the distance of that 
magnetic power in that bar, however slight. So 
if the soul is magnetic, or has a magnetic agent, 
we can infer that its tender and invisible agen- 
cies work upon us ; and although we may at 
times be unconscious of them, we cannot deny 
their ultimate power. Though they may touch 
us with yearning and affection, they may find no 
response from our too consciousness mortality. 



SPIRITUALITY. 203 

The moonbeam upon an icy mountain peak has 
some influence, however inappreciable. The 
fault is with us, not with the spirits. 

" There are seasons when the soul seems to recog- 
nize the presence of, and hold communion with the 
departed. Who shall say that at such times there is 
not a real communion between the living and the 
dead V— Bishop 1). W. Clarke. 

Wherever a man goes, and upon whatever 
he touches, he leaves his magnetic impress, 
which radiates upon all who pass there. Every 
iron tool and every other object we handle are 
more or less charged ; those objects induct other 
objects ad infinitum. Hunters say when a fox 
jumps upon a rock or into the water and gets 
his feet "cold," the chasing hound loses the 
scent. The sensation is magnetic, as in the 
expression of human love which appeals through 
nerves of the lips and nostrils, that perhaps have 
nothing to do with the olfactories. Along the 
cold stone city flagging, of a wintry day, where 
thousands of feet are scraping, the dog traces 
his loved master. Can it be by odor ? A dog 
will touch you with his nose and look inquir- 
ingly into your eyes. He learns by that act 
your disposition. 

The affinity between the iron bar and the 
stream or current of magnetism shows they 
must be composed of similar elements. Per- 
chance the magnetic stream is simply energetic 



206 MItfD IS MATTER. 

and radiant particles of magnetized iron, iron dif- 
fused into the degree of inconceivable fineness 
predicated of the original ether. Break a mag- 
net into an infinite number of pieces and each 
piece will be a magnet with its polarities. Con- 
tinue its subdivision down to molecules and 
atoms and the polarities and energy still exist. 
.Cany on the division of the particles or atoms 
to an ultimate rarefied gaseous state, they will 
still remain iron, with their magnetic potency 
and polarity ; and thus may not that unseen 
force between the horse-shoe magnet and the 
armature be simply floating energetic particles 
of iron, load- stone or cosmic original ultimate 
matter sprung into activity and released from a. 
condensed form ? Have we not here an illustra 
tion at once of the materiality and potency of 
the active soul ? If the unformed Universe was 
originally this rarified energetic fluid, its own 
cohesive properties would, by shock or volition, 
gather into spheres acreting, one with another, 
and the cumulative power of the cohesion might 
produce what we call planets and suns. The 
nebulous gatherings now seen by our telescopes 
are this very process now going on. No physi- 
cal forms are there ; but we know by analogy 
there may be intelligencies. 



CHAPTEE VIII. 

GOD WITH US. 

" God surrounds me like an atmosphere," Dr. Meredith — A de- 
monstration of theology from the foregoing theories — The 
presistency of hope united with the persistency of matter as- 
sures us of immortality — The social and moral benefits of 
material spiritualism — Dr. Thomas Chalmers — Bible spiritual- 
ism — Death a progress in life, Robert Browning — The soul 
sustaining power that is in the atomicity of the Holy Ghost 
— Evolution into spiritualism — The dispersion of soul particles 
by loss of moral virility — Righteousness is the health of the 
soul — The spiritual body — The resurrection a scientific 
fact. 

This philosophy, besides inculcating a rational 
theology, will be found a practical aid to indivi- 
duality, for it enables us to detect social infec- 
tions and thus to evade them, to gauge the 
weapons before invisible and unknown, striking 
at the soul and character, and to either parry or 
encounter them. " Forewarned, forearmed." 
It enables us to detect silent, secret, magnetic 
human vampires and to shun or destroy them. 
We have the powers of discretion, free agency, 
isolation and defense. We may not be able to 
compete with a stronger nature, but we can hide 



208 MIND IS MATTER. 

or flee. We can keep out of the blaze of the 
sun if we do not want to be consumed. If we 
cannot cope with Napoleon or Caesar we can de- 
cline his company. We can apply this philoso- 
phy in holding true friends to our souls " with 
hooks of steel," or in putting aggressive and 
selfish people at harmless distance. We apply 
it to cherishing our children. Our sustaining 
and touch have kept them all from the grave, 
and by it we have walked with them down into 
" the valley of the shadow " and back. Adopt- 
ing this belief, that the soul is a substance and 
operates by physical laws, one will find it grow 
upon him, and it will find illustrations and be 
confirmed at every step in his life. It will ex- 
plain to him mysterious social influences ; will 
enable him day by day to strengthen his will as 
he does his physical frame, and will open up 
wondrous fields of psychological law. Above 
all, he can stand with self -poise in the madness 
of the multitude, whose passions are stirred by 
the lightest speck of physic effervescence, and 
measure himself against domineering wills all 
about him. It is a direct means of strengthen- 
ing and ennobling the soul by recognizing it in 
the category of tangible things. A great soul 
cannot be made through vice, crime, or viola- 
tion of simple nature. Virtue, temperance, rest, 
peace, fresh air, labor, with education, will make 



GOD WITH US. 209 

magnetic power, or largeness of quantity and 
fibre of soul. Will-force is physically measure- 
able ; it is manifest in muscular exertion. A 
man may, by moral and intellectual industry 
and economy, gather great attainments, but he 
cannot successfully impart or enforce them un- 
less he has capacity — physical capacity and quan- 
tity of soul, actual physical length, breadth and 
thickness. The soul is not a being of super- . 
natural extension and limitless capacity for 
draughts of service ; it is a creature ; it is limit- 
ed ; it is finite. It needs to be fed, conserved 
and protected like the body, and has limits of 
power like all created things. 

All this foregoing philosophy would be idle 
unless relating to man's moral good. There is 
a spiritual lesson in it. The atomicity of God 
gives us a natural religion and expounds our 
former faith ; it seems to be a connecting link 
between earth and heaven ; between moral law 
and material law. Morals are but the revised 
statutes of religion ; spirituality is religion itself. 
God about us, in our presence, not somewhere 
else, is a stronger influence than a theory can 
be. We must have more than a conjectured 
God. Our own intelligence resides some where, 
in some thing. Which is the substance ? Is it the 
most subtile, homogeneous and ultimate element 
of our bodies — the electric fluid ? Dissection 



210 MIND IS MATTER. 

has laid open to our very eyes the secret chan- 
nels, battery and paraphernalia of such a fluid 
life. Thus may not the Creative Intelligence 
inhere in the Universal ether? That is the 
"image" in which we have been created. 

The plant needs the actual contact of the sun« 
shine, not to possess in itself a " theory " about 
sunshine, nor a " belief " in sunshine. Man 
needs a God that can assimilate with him, with 
his spiritual and physical particles in reality of 
contact, like the proximity of one we love, not 
a theory about God, nor a belief in a distant 
God. One can hardly, if this reasoning has 
taken hold of his mind, escape a comforting, 
new and abiding spiritual code as well as an in- 
creased faith in Revelation. God's presence is 
as tangible to the spiritualist Christian as a sun 
bath is to the Atheist. 

God with us — not as a conjecture nor 
metaphor, but a chemical fact — is all there is of 
religion. Recognizing the bodily presence of 
God as a surrounding and penetrating ether 
will compel one to so live in holiness as though 
clasped hand in hand, through every minute, 
night and day with the most exalted and lovely 
human personage. We must come to this 
nuidic, materialistic idea of God, the Holy Ghost 
and the human soul, or give up our immortality. 
God can be with us in only two ways — either 



GOD WITH US. 211 

as an abstract idea, or as a cosmic material 
essence. A subjective or metaphysical God or 
soul is only materislism, it being annihilation 
with the death of the body. But as an ultimate 
material element they are enduring. Godpene-^y/ 
tmting__and smTOjunxling, us like the magnetic ' 
current is an ever-present monitor, confessional, 
and witness. In the bodily presence of a noble 
friend we are correct and true ; absent from him, 
no knowing what we may be. It requires no 
more stretch of the imagination nor violation of 
reason and experience to make God a surround- 
ing substance like the air, than to know his 
works, see him in the electric gleam, or feel him 
in the thunderbolt. He is a God of matter ; he 
has organized matter ; and a material form for 
Him is not beneath his dignity. It is just as 
natural and easy for the Creator to be bodily 
present to his creatures in a diffused cosmic 
whole, as it is for his creatures to be present to 
each other. 

"The physical universe is, without figure of speech, 
' the body of God. You see God as plainly as you see 
your fellow men, no more and no less. " — Rev. John 
Scudder. 

Immortality, also, may depend upon tenacity, 
hope, aspiration, joy, object, mental and moral 
health , and love embracing all as the key to all. 
With love come hope and all other desires and 



212 MIND IS MATTER. 

aspirations. Love is atomic affinity ; it em 
braces all other faculties. "Whom shall we 
meet in the beyond to enjoy ? " is the great 
question. The law of present persistency and 
continuity extends beyond the present life. A 
human being without desire for companionship, 
left to remorse, shame, hate, despair, may per- 
haps commit soul suicide. Existence under 
normal conditions is a pleasure. All are glad 
we were born. Holiness, Faith, Hope, consti- 
tute the natural propulsion and psychic mo- 
mentum that carry us across the line from mor- 
tality to immortality. But those qualities 
cannot go forward alone ; they must have a ma- 
terial basis to ride upon. In one who lives a 
natural life, that is, a life in accordance with 
God's law, there is, by nature, a blissful enjoy- 
ment of mere being, a love and tenacity of life. 
It is yet a problem whether all sentient egos sur- 
vive animal dissolution, if not, do any, and if some 
do not and others do where the line is drawn. If 
the imperishability of matter requires volition 
united to it in sufficient degree to keep the soul 
particles together, then the degree of desire to 
live depends upon inducement to live — hope, 
ambition, love, object. Moral and intellectual 
energy is necessary to sustain material continuity 
up to the sticking point. This hope is the link 
between the here and the hereafter, for matter 



GOD WITH US. 213 

does not perish ; cohesion, at least, always con- 
tinues with it, and intelligence also, as far as 
we can see while accompanying the phenomena 
to the last dying spark of matter in the material 
body. Hope is materiaLand spiritual energy 
alloyed. 

" For we are saved by hope." — St. Paul. 

We are led to a future state of happiness as the 
natural result or sequence of a correct life, not as 
an arbitrary gift or reward. What we shall have 
after death will be in the natural course and 
effect, commencing here and continuing there. 
We have the illustration of this principle in this 
life. Nothing is claimed of the future state that 
is not analogous with what we find here. Hope 
and body here form the copula of life. Hope 
and ultimate atoms hereafter will constitute the 
copula of life everlasting. The two existing, 
there can be no death. What can destroy or dis- 
perse magnetic atoms that in and of themselves 
desire to live and keep together ? 

It is inquired, " What about those who die 
without hope ? " It is answ T ered, that the im- 
mediateness of hope and virtue just before dis- 
solution is not so much needed as a life -long 
hope or inherited character, a substantial stock 
of spiritual constitution. Lunatics and infants — 
dying may depend upon what has gone before 
in their heredity and personal mental vitality. 



214 MIND IS MATTER. 

Eevival, or resurrection, depends upon spiritual 
virility, inherent moral momentum and per- 
sistency, like health in seeds. In the live seed 
there is a persistent dynamic force ; so in soul- 
seed. Any other resurrection would be arbitra- 
tion. The idea of lawless arbitration from God 
is fit only for savages and children. Conscious- 
ness revives after death as it does after healthy 
coma or sleep, or as memories of long forgotten 
events revive by reflex molecular action. The 
deceased infants of the vicious have a tendency 
to annihilation parallel with the physiological 
foetus of the physically weak and invirile. Per- 
haps it is of little consequence. Mayhap spirit- 
ual resurrection may be prevented analogously 
as a physical birth may, and souls fall in the 
other world still born. Unless the soul atoms 
are cohered by the cement of hope and morals, 
proving a reason for existence, they may dissi- 
pate into the Nirvana of the Buddhists, who are 
exhausted by sensualism and materialism and 
have no Hope. This philosophy helps us solve 
the mystery of death, to take away its sting, to 
dispel its blackness, to make it a portal of at- 
tractiveness. What we see of a man is not all 
of him. Faculty and the display of faculty are 
two different things. Death is only a subjective 
condition with the looker-on ; it is not death 
with the one passing away. There is probably 



GOD WITH US. 215 

no consciousness of death by those who we say 
are dying. There is probably never a necessary 
change or decline in the soul from its maximum 
degree of development on through bodily disso- 
lution. 

Our race cannot boast of moral progress, or 
even respectable development, while that most 
natural, common, and inevitable fact — death, is 
regarded with an ape-like horror. In this re- 
spect our so called " matter-of-fact " and " prac 
tical " men are in the worst plight. With all 
the boasted civilization of mankind there is not 
to-day in our secular curriculum anything about 
the only absolutely universal fact connected 
with life — which is bodily dissolution. The be- 
yond is a dark mist, except for Eevelation, or a 
new philosophy. It is high time this smart bus- 
iness world were casting about for the science 
of this subject, to lead it away from its ultra 
materialism, whichis as mole-sighted as damn- 
ing. It is unworthy the race not to have one 
primary, practical, and universal doctrine in 
respect of our future. Is it not, come to think 
soberly about it, astounding, that outside of the 
Bible we are without even a hope. A delusion 
would be better than nothing, for that would 
S3t up a moral system, and hold us to a sense 
of good order and accountability. Without the 



216 MIND IS MATTER. 

moral influence of a future, society would dis- 
solve as quickly as matter would with its 
cohesion withdrawn from it by the Almighty's 
will. Old men who are " kings of finance " and 
" props" in the business centres, continue in 
their counting-rooms, aggrandizing unnecessary 
wealth that younger men need, treading the 
wheel of materialism to the last, to shut out 
from their sight the gates of the tomb, or to 
brace themselves against its fancied chill. An 
old millionaire, eighty years of age, tottered 
with a carefully prepared list of interest items by 
his own trembling hand, to a poor small 
mortgager who was willing to average them, 
hit or miss, to save time and figuring. In two 
weeks the millionaire had run his allotted time 
and was dead. What was he more than an 
aged monkey, even with his ' i standing in the 
street " and his palaces? We know that death 
is inevitable ; then why not recognize it as a 
familiar, pleasant and welcome number in the 
programme of our existence ? Why is not its 
philosophy as elemental in our common schools 
as any science, so long as it is inevitable ? Why 
is not old age regarded as a tranquil, glorious 
sunset and an approach to welcome rest, — 

"All his prospects brightening to the last, 
His heaven commences ere the world be past " — 



GOD WITH US. 217 

and death, not as the sum of all calamities, but 
like removal to a country villa by the ambitious 
family, or the retirement from business by the 
hopeful merchant ? Why should not our lives 
be a practical, joyous, and halcyon preparation 
for those other material realms that science tells 
us cannot be annihilated ? It is bound to come. 
Then why not be as practical about it as the 
caterpillar ? The world will come to this phil- 
osophy at last. The distance between our here 
and our hereafter is as thin, immediate and 
proximate, as an egg shell through which the 
chick pecks his own way to the outer world. If 
this physical world is made out of the ether, 
are not the ethereal realms consistent with an 
ethereal body ? Because we don't know, it is not 
a proof that it is not. Knowing that we may 
never die, what happy unconcerned lives we 
might have here, taking no thought for the 
morrow, except in that moral hygiene neces- 
sary to revival ; believing this world still 
peopled with the souls of our beloved. That 
simple science would instantly transform this 
earth into a paradise. This reasoning meets the 
Bible ; and the psycho- materialists meet the re- 
ligionist who has arrived there first by the short 
cut of faith and Kevelation. But our men of 
" material prosperity," of great wealth, who so 
superciliously patronize us all, are, by their ex- 



218 MIND IS MATTER. 

ample, making earth a veritable hell. They 
pursue " business" only until they flicker out 
like a candle-end, and it is doubtful if there is 
enough spiritual carbon in them left to be ever 
relit. The "Stock Boards," "Gold Boards" 
and "Exchanges," with all their comfortable 
pride, are like shaved -headed bedlamites who 
ought to wear masks for mere shame and guilt. 
With mercenary frenzy they shrink like luna- 
tics and froth like fighting wild boars, but after 
" Change " they take high places in society. 
Are not the dissipated fortunes, the deserted 
mansions and scattered families, enough re- 
minders that there is no lasting character in the 
objects of their desperate contests, vexations, 
weariness and insomnia ? Do they not see that 
they tumble into their graves beaten, a failure at 
last? Then what is success? It is leisure and 
happiness here and an eternal life beyond. That 
is the ultimate instinct and hope here in making 
money. 

When the Bible fathers spoke about mansions 
in the skies, they knew what they were talking 
about. They had neither time nor space to hand 
down detailed analysis and explanation. They 
had no printing, so they thought more than they 
wrote. They were compelled to be terse and 
epigrammatic. Those objects in eternity were not 
ideals nor delusions ; they esteemed them as 



GOD WITH US. 219 

much more real and material than earth as the 
ether is more homogeneous and lasting than 
physical matter. Those heavenly things need 
not be of the same chemical combination as our 
objects here, and yet may be real and objective 
to a disenthralled soul. If all forms of matter 
here have come from one original substance, 
may not the soul find raw material there, in that 
original substance, for its employment ? We 
are not at the top of wisdom and discernment. 
We shall not be developed to our capacity until 
we stand on earth and with philosophic parallax 
look into heaven as we have done into the stellar 
spaces. We shall yet do this ; and we shall know 
God and angels, as we know the size, weight, 
composition and location of the stars. 

Dr. Thomas Chalmers, of Glasgow, an emi- 
nent orthodox authority, in his sermon on " The 
new heavens and the new earth," records him- 
self as believing in a material heaven, and the 
following eloquent quotation has a character of 
science as well as revelation : 

"No, my brethren, the object of the administration 
we sit under is to extirpate sin, but it is not to sweep 
away materialism. By the convulsions of the last day 
it may be shaken and broken down from its present 
arrangements ; and with a heat so fervent as to melt 
its most solid elements, it may be utterly dissolved. 
And thus may the earth again become ' without form 
and void,' but without one particle of its substance go- 
ing into annihilation. Out of the ruins of this second 
chaos may another earth and another heaven be made 



i 






220 HIND IS MATTER. 

and rise, and a new materialism with other aspects of 
beauty and magnificence emerge from the wreck of this 
mighty transformation and the world be peopled as be- 
fore with varieties of material loveliness, and space be 
again lighted up into a firmament of material splendor. 
We are now walking on a terrestrial surface not more 
compact, perhaps, than the one we shall walk on ; and 
we are now wearing terrestrial bodies not firmer and 
more solid than the ones we shall hereafter wear. In- 
stead of being transferred to some abode of dimness 
and mystery, so remote from human experience as to be 
beyond all human comprehension, we shall walk for- 
ever in a land resplendent with tbose sensible delights 
and those sensible glories, which we doubt not will lie 
profusely scattered over the new heavens and the new 
earth." 

When the soul becomes emancipated of its 
animal habitation it assumes the form of its 
own spiritual temperament, standard and char- 
acter, not having any physical restraints. In 
— • heaven the crooked straighten themselves ; the 
blind see ; the deaf hear : the lame walk ; the 
black are made as white as they want to be. 
The resurrection of ■' the " body would resurrect 
all bodily infirmities, for which Heaven would 
not be thanked ; but the resurrection of a body 
would be a spiritual body that would make im- 
mortality a blessing. All who believe in the re- 
surrection must believe in a material soul. The 
soul is as perfect in form as imagination, will- 
power and character can make it ; it forms itself 
according to its own ideal. Take comfort, ye 
maimed and broken ones of earth. 

" The soul will not know either deformity or pain." — Emerson. 



GOD WITH US. 221 

Resurrection means simply the resurrection 
of the psychic ego. " The " body could not be 
resurrected, because it is an indefinable thing ; 
it has no enduring character ; is always shift- 
ing ; is never one instant what it is at another. 
There is no such thing as " the " body as a fixed 
quantity. It is a phantom. It is like the stream 
of a river. A resurrection of " the " body would 
require an epochal principle — a fixed period of 
time in its development. When should that be ; 
at the emaciation of old age, at the death-bed, 
or at what period of life, health and strength ? 
The ethereal realms would not be adapted to 
physiology. 

If we could learn by heart, ingrain in our con- 
sciousness from childhood, by science and phil- 
osophy, not by revelation and faith, the simple 
and natural fact that our personal existence is 
continuous, without any break at bodily dissolu- 
tion, it would entirely change human life and 
society. It would remove the fear of death and 
separation ; would banish care and our crazy 
pursuit of wealth, and restore primitive happi- 
ness. Our intense materialism comes from our 
ignorance of spiritual philosophy. 

Our confidence in a future state should not 
rest alone upon what we can persuade our faith 
into, but rather upon what we can know. The 
instinctive dread of final death is barbarous and 



222 MIND IS MATTER. 

unworthy of educated beings. Were we satis 
fied that life once began may never end ; that 
death of another person means only our own ob- 
scuration or loss of power to see the departed ; 
that they do not leave us, but stay about us, 
only that we cannot see them ; and were we in- 
formed of the nature of psychic substance, of 
its adamantite quality, and that in all the physio- 
logical changes the final one of death is only a 
trivial incident in soul- history, a mere coat- 
shedding, then we would live here more ration- 
ally and happily. We would worship mammon 
less, would cultivate sound morals more, and 
thus qualify the soul for that unit-tenacity, that 
moral culture and hope that make an enjoyment 
of mere existence and assure a reawakening. 
Even from the centre of the finest evangelical 
church, in the most favored Christian land, with 
minister of profound thought, thrilling elo- 
quence and exact piety, surrounded by a congre- 
gation of intelligence, devotion, pure bodies, 
comely apparel and all sorts of civilization, there 
goes up only a glimpse of spiritual sight, a mere 
mole blinking, compared with that clear day of 
spiritual development and enfranchisement yet 
to come to the simplest of us from a thorough 
and comprehensive spiritual culture. 

There can be no conceivable conditions in this 
world that would make it desirable and satisfac- 



GOD WITH US. 223 

tory to live here always, except to young and 
animal natures. Under its very best the body 
is a weakness, shame and disgust. Wealth and 
station do not bring content and happiness. The 
most approved scholarship, the best fortune, 
and the happiest of domestic life suffer inevit- 
ably the visitations of sickness, separation, 
death, loneliness, disappointment, soul-craving, 
unrestful longing and looking forward, a want 
unsatisfied and unexplained, and, at least, pain- 
ful compassion with the suffering around us. 
Nuptial vows are degraded, family altars are 
thrown down, strangers carry away our loved 
ones, families melt away and forget each other, 
parents and children in courts of law swear 
away each other's characters, and, finally, grave- 
yards are sold. This is not cynicism nor pes- 
simism ; these things are proved facts. But our 
egos survive and go on with all their qualities. 
May not those loves revive again and those egos 
be reunited ? But earth is not favorable to that 
unity nor to permanence. 

The earth is always exhaustible ; the ether is 
inexhaustible. Even the pure charms of inani- 
mate nature weary, because they are subjective, 
so far as they appeal to the imagination. They 
give back no substance. A man may go around 
the earth and return home unsatisfied, longing 
and yearning. But if in that home, however 



224 MIND IS MATTER. 

little and plain, there be love and religion, his 
life is an unending fountain of joy ; the cup of 
his blessings is always full, because those ele- 
ments are objective, feeding-streams of soul 
substance from others, living fountains replen- 
ishing his waste. If there be not religion and 
love in that home, it is a mere dog kennel or 
mad- house. Mutuality is support ; solitude is 
decay. The happiest hour of a king is that when 
alone with his queen. Religion heightens 
'love. 

Believing in the physical substance of the soul 
we can see and feel a tangible life in the skies. 
The soul, when it escapes, may stay right here 
or traverse the ether, which is more real and 
abiding than earth, and has more objects there 
to entertain and engage the spiritual faculties. 
All this would be more miraculous than our 
present existence, which has come from that 
very substance. The soul hovers about its old 
associations and communes with its old friends. 
It may not speak to physical ears nor show it- 
self to physical eyes ; but its laws of magnetic 
contact and its ' ' still small voice " upon our im- 
pulses remain, though we may often be too pre- 
occupied, or too coarse to heed them. As gently 
as some vibrations in physical laws, our depart- 
ed friends suffuse us with our first and original 
thoughts, and thus they guide us. The recog- 



GOD WITH US. 225 

nition between us and them would be more 
mutual and practical were we less obtuse. If 
the soul is electric it has the speed of electricity; 
and a thought by us may summon to our side 
in an instant a friend-soul who is a million of 
miles distant. 

Old metaphysicians tell us we cannot trace 
the origin of oar impulses. Are not these 
spirit voices sometimes the origin % As we be- 
come refined, reflective and spiritualized we 
open ourselves to their presence. They need not 
go to the skies any more than they need go to 
the center of the ocean, or prairies. But thither 
they may go when they have gathered their 
loving groups. 

We have assumed the interstellar ether to be 
more durable than earth ; there may be con- 
stancy of love ; and why may not those two, 
farming the soul, cohere and thus make contin- 
uity, which is immortality ? It is well to believe 
there is something or somebody abiding and 
true, for nothing in this world is. All here is 
changeable and vanishing. We want a God and 
his eternal laws and rewards ; we want happi- 
ness and peace that will stay ; we want a sure 
thing ; we want a life without forebodings, and 
pleasures without dregs. 

The continuity of the ego is the key-note of 
all existence. Without that nothing else is 



226 MIND IS MATTER, 

worth considering ; all would be moral chaos. 
God cannot be alone, uncompanionable. We 
might as well say there is but one tree, one 
flower, one man, one lion— one of any species. 
The human ego is a thing — a product or evolu- 
tion. Why suppose any creation or ego to be 
discontinued or annihilated ? The evolution of 
intellect, showing the sharp matter-of-fact at- 
tainments of mankind, is now arriving into a 
rational spiritualism and gradually approaching 
the teachings of Eevelation. 



The age is now enquiring, " Is life worth 
living ?" Surely not in itself. It is only worth 
living as a preparation for futurity. The f cetal 
life is not worth living except as a successful 
preparation for this outward life, which is, in 
its turn, only another foetal preparation for a 
third and spiritual development. This recog- 
nition of a surrounding material God is the old- 
fashioned "grace." Without it there can be 
no sure finishing touch to human character. The 
Godless wise and Godless good may think, in the 
flush of health, education and prosperity, they 
are very proper and nice ; may think they have 
Irhe highest degree of family love and personal 
honor ; but they are at the best only superior 
heathen ; their feet are upon sand. However 



GOD WITH US. 227 

educated and lovely a woman is, she is only a 
refined barbarian, not safe for man until sancti- 
fied and clarified by the religion of recognizing 
God's actual presence ; then she becomes pel- 
lucid, angelic. And no man is fit to have in his 
control her delicate mind and body until his 
savage nature is toned by religion or careful 
moral philosophy. No family group, no con- 
jugal pair can enjoy the highest love without its 
sanctification by eternal principles. 

"Faith makes me feel that God is around me as an 
atmosphere. The things of this world are things that 
dreams are made of ; they shift like a procession of 
phantoms. Things that are seen are only shadows of 
invisible substances. All physical combination is the 
expression and result of invisible law." — Dr. R. R. 
Meredith. 



P rayer _ is the natural, scientific, facejo-face 

recognition of the pervasive atomicity of God, 
like a chemical affinity. It will keep the mind 
serene and sustained in the most harassing and 
destructive environments. In a military prison, 
with hunger, cold, filth, disease, and despair ; 
locked hopelessly in an asylum surrounded by 
the perishing insane ; or in civil prison, consort- 
ing with vile and abandoned criminals, the con- 
stant invocation of a superior power will keep 
the temper sweet, the intellect balanced, the 
hope alive, and the will strong, until the hour 



228 MIND IS MATTER. 

of deliverance. No subjective or self -source of 
philosoplry, imagination or wisdom, was ever 
known to do all that. What else could work 
such miraculous effect but a sympathetic ob- 
jective God of atomic force, or objective some- 
thing equivalent to God ? If man has within 
himself efficient moral resources, then he him- 
self is eternal and worthy of worship. The 
natural instincts of the human family towards 
an object of thankfulness, an object of sup- 
port, and object of guidance, an object of at- 
tainment, is the balancing argument in the con- 
cept of a personal God. Such a concept violates 
no logic, no rule of Nature, does much good, 
does no harm ; and if an objective material God 
exists, He would be no more wonderful or 
incomprehensible than any insect or flower. If 
we cannot demonstrate a God nor a future state, 
prayer and faith, even in their blind direction of 
atomic attraction towards something else, 
answer the practical purpose. There is nothing 
in the whole range of human ."delusions" so 
effectual. It so fits the man, his happiness and 
successes that it is as natural a science as physi- 
ology. Love and prayer are chemical affinities 
with their object. 

" No system of human culture has ever yet been de- 
vised for bringing out the best there is in a man, equal 
to prayer. Man's soul is made for it. I could call up 



GOD WITH US. 229 

one thousand people here this hour who would say they 
believe prayer is answered. It is not an experiment." 
Dr. R. R. Meredith. 

Nothing will sustain the weary, sick, perish- 
ing soul but this inexhaustible sea of spirit es- 
sence, which is the Holy Ghost. Humanity has 
no cure. All the plants in the world cannot 
help an unthrifty plant ; it needs the universal 
air and sunshine. Even human loves and all 
mortal felicities fail us in the ultimate test. But 
nobody ever missed refreshment and restoration 
at this psychic fountain. When this is vouch- 
safed the gates of death vanish and our path 
hence to eternity is uninterrupted, clear and 
happy. This is a material law, not a moral 
law. 

Even a despairing man, sad, lonely and a fail- 
ure in business, within the blank walls of his 
cheap room, can, if he will surrender, obtain a 
sun-burst of aid and cheer from this ethereal 
source, that will not only clarify his brain and 
strengthen his heart, but it will radiate from his 
face, infect all about him, and procure him em- 
ployment. As the plant needs daily sunshine, 
and so, by physical law, daily family worship is 
the king bolt of life. As God cannot be local- 
ized there is in this element of prayer an in- 
stinctive recognition of his universal actual pre- 
sence. Prayer belongs to natural science. 



230 MIND IS MATTER. 

All the sensuous and secular pleasures that 
the greatest riches afford do not make the soul 
happy in its years, of maturity and ripe wisdom. 
The unhopeful, ungodly and idle rich, surrounded 
by luxury, and with the pleasures of both hemi- 
spheres at their command, with complete suc- 
cess in life, die with moral suffocation ; after 
having been sated with sensuousness, their last 
days are tortured with indefinable longing and 
mental void worse than positive disasters or 
bodily pain. But the religious have real, posi- 
tive happiness, no aching uncertainty ; and they 
go to the future content. Then why is not im- 
mortality studied in our academies and common 
schools ? It is the one thing hoped for, and 
death is inevitable. Instinct, all moral com- 
parisons, and analogy with many known facts, 
all lead us to believe there is a final goal of bet- 
terment. We should discover what, that is and 
some scientific and satisfactory way of getting 
at it, at something sure and of universal accept- 
ance. Physical pleasures cloy, exhaust, and, if 
lived for themselves, finally destroy. But the 
last of a true spiritualist is a success. " The 
proof of the pudding is in the eating." Religion 
wears well. The surest road to even earthly 
happiness in the end is the disenthrallment of 
physical hampers. No pleasures that come of 
mortality are abiding. We want gratifications 



GOD WITH US. 231 

that do not deceive or fail us. Give the soul 
material fibre and along with that hope. That 
is done by a correct life. 

After we have exhausted the world, then 
what ? Are we left with a sickening blank ? 
God and His ethereal universe are inexhaustible 
subjects that satisfy the soul — that leave no 
place for ennui. They are the only fit and nat- 
ural contemplation of life's close. 

Are there conscious entities in the next world ? 
If there be, are they to have objects of employ- 
ment and pleasure ? And why cannot a flower 
there draw its invisible nourishment as it draws 
invisible nourishment here % The tissues of 
plants and animals here are built up from 
ethereal substance. Science says that. 

" Heaven is the coronation of all exquisite colors, 
a great orchard of beauty, an infinite garden of divine 
floriculture. I do not know but that there may be a 
material heaven as well as a spiritual heaven. I shall 
not be at all chagrined if, waking up from the last 
sleep, I found in the better land hyacinths and camelias 
and violets and pansies." — Dr. Talmage. 

All the various forms of matter in the ethe- 
real realms would not be one whit more miracu- 
lous or wonderful there than they are here. It 
would simply be another way of doing things. 

"Ether is adamantine, absolutely solid and incon- 
ceivably energetic and active.'' — Dr. Samuel Harris. 

" Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of 
heaven. " 



232 MIND IS MATTER. 

The resurrected body means the electrical 
body which is finally independent of physiology. 
The soul of the seed — its dynamic action — forms 
the process of color and tissue laying in the 
flower. The spiritual body, from the first 
germ, forms the physiological body and keeps 
on forming it with the power of its original 
inherited temperament or inclination. In a finer 
realm, of course, it will construct a finer body ; 
maybe one unseen by physical eyes, b ut a bo dy ; 
arid if God, or the Holy Ghost, is a substance, 
that substance will sustain and feed it. Love 
of God is cohesion of atomic affinities. When 
one feels weak and mean he can draw strength 
and nobility from the skies ; that is now a 
practical success with millions of people. A look 
at the blue ether is worth a round of gin-mills 
to the right-minded man. " Hanker for drink " 
can be temporarily removed every time by a 
short prayer. Old men begin stimulus to sup- 
ply the failing energies of the soul when ex. 
hausted by labor or vice. That is the beginning 
of the end, for stimuli lose their power, and 
collapse follows. But if men, when feeling the 
soul wane, a vacuity and longing, would culti- 
vate atomic affinity and presence with the Holy 
Spirit, by contemplation, prayer and full sur- 
render, this would be refreshment without cost 
and the fountain of perpetual soul-youth, for 



GOD WITH US. 233 

what is the body in the long run but refuse ? 
The most nourishing and grateful food for old 
folks is sympathy and love ; if not of that of 
friends, then of God. It is literally and without 
metaphor, objective sustenance, satisfying the 
mind precisely as food or stimuli does. 

' ' He restoreth ray soul. " — David. 

"Buy wine and milk without money and without 
price. " — Isaiah. 

A man's breath will soon exhaust the fresh 
air in his room. He needs the great blue dome 
of heaven for his healthful supply of air. So he, 
left to his own resources, soon exhausts his 
finite moral nature. He needs the illimitable 
spaces of the Holy Ghost to nourish his soul. 
Man in himself is exhaustible ; he wants some- 
thing inexhaustible. A man and wife, in the full 
prosperity of business, health, children, home 
and love, are yet tired, ennuied. Their cup of 
happiness has been full. What more are they 
to have or to do ? They kneel, and with arms 
about each other, rejuvenate their souls by in- 
vocation of the inexhaustible God, and rise again 
at this nuptial altar of youth, with its hope and 

joy. 

Every man with good sense and good heart, 
but who does not rely upon the Bible, 
has, after all, found himself but a poor 



234 MIND IS MATTER. 

stick to lean upon when he wants to re- 
form. His self-resources do not furnish him 
with his own standard of excellence, nor uphold 
that prescribed to him. Whatever his conceit 
and strength is, he desponds at last. But when 
he can realize scientifically that the Creative 
Intelligence is a substance all around and pene- 
trating him as a physical fat I, he feels that he 
has a supply that never runs short, and its com- 
forts w T ear to the last, and beyond, if he so w r ills 
it.- A philosophy like this cannot but produce 
to materialists more spiritualization of mind 
and conduct. They hate to think of death. The 
heart is right about that ; we never die, except 
physiologically ; and in that we are always dy- 
ing , we are never fully alive bodily, because it 
ilTiiot permanent. 

A reasoning spirituality like this, confirmed, 
will remove that barbarism still lingering with 
society of regarding with so much interest and 
reverence the dead body. It is a holy and tender 
love, too sacred to be disturbed, that watches 
beside the form once filled with life and love ; 
but it is, after all, a misapplied devotion that 
comes of spiritual blindness ; it is like remaining 
beside the cage when the bird has flown. The 
body surely decays ; reason and experience ad- 
monish us that we cannot be with it always ; in 
any case, we must soon leave it forever and ever. 



&0D WITH US. 235 

But with mortal simplicity we embalm bodies to 
stop their natural chemical change, and in pro- 
portion to the efficiency of the embalming art do 
we illustrate our materialism and distance from 
the Christian religion. We so cling to the earth 
and all that is earthly that we treasure reverent- 
ly the least scrap of crumbling bones or putrid- 
ity, while gradually and inevitable the physical 
elements are claiming their own. There is no- 
thing reasonable, scientific or in the highest 
degree humane, in thus st living to preserve the 
most offensive and least abiding part of humanity 
one hour beyond the separation of body and 
spirit. A clearer intelligence and higher spiritual 
development will prompt us as soon as the 
soul leaves the body, to turn from death to the 
life that is now freed, out of pain, happy, and 
probably hovering around us for s} r mpathy and 
love ; to turn from corruption to incorruption, 
from mortality to that which has put on im- 
mortality. In proportion to our certainty in 
spirituality are we more resigned to death-bed 
separations, and also more composed and reason- 
able in our funeral ceremonies. Sacred grief 
then, however, is none the less human because 
blinded. In our material education and prac- 
tices we loath to give up our loved ones, and we 
stay fervently by all that is visible to our mortal 
eyes to the last moment ; but a more spiritual 



236 MIND iS MATTES. 

training will assuage our grief and lift us beyond 
the grave into the open sunlight of deathless 
existence. A change in our philosophy will 
work practical relief to society. Costly funerals 
are a burden to the poor. All burials 
should belong to the functions of the civil 
government and should be as uniform for rich 
and poor, high and low, as any other sanitary 
regulation. Who cares now for the grave of 
Adam and Eve, Moses, Alexander, Paul or 
Caesar ? After a railroad accident, where a 
human body is torn to shreds, or afire, when ifc 
is a lump of coal, loathsome to strangers and 
maddening to relatives, it is yet preserved and 
handled with unaccountable supers titution and 
tenderness. 

A locomotive grinds to pieces and stops over 
a youth upon an elevated railroad. The engine 
is not moved on a few inches for the remains 
to be taken away, but ten thousand people are 
delayed for hours until the mammoth machine 
is lifted bodily. No purpose whatever is served 
in this, except perhaps to prevent the injury of 
another dead fibre. Man and beast instinctively 
recoil with horror from a corpse as from a rep- 
tile ; and it is only the moral hardening of the 
trained class of undertakers that gives us what 
we are accustomed to call iC decent burials." 
The public exposure of a wasting dead face is 



GOD WITH US. 237 

barbarous. Why look upon the ashes when we 
have seen the flame ? It is our very materialism 
that makes us stay about and yet loathe to 
touch the dead. In our narrow views we go 
with hallowed feelings to the mound that once 
covered the remains of our beloved. It is a 
sacred spot, and yet it is with us simple decep- 
tion, for the body has long since assimilated 
with nature whence it came, and we might as 
well go to the middle of the sea where our friends 
are engulfed, expecting to be near them. This 
localization and physical preservation of the 
departed is, after all, a baseless sentiment. A 
higher spiritual education will never allow our 
sympathies, even at the death scene, for an in- 
stant, to forsake the living soul in contempla- 
tion of its cast-off shell. Probably our emanci- 
pated spirit-friends witness with pity our acts 
over the clay they have just left. 

Habitual and practical spiritualization of 
mind, a belief that the disenthralled friend is 
still with us, as God is — in the same ethereal es- 
sence from which science says all things were 
made — will banish our present funeral horrors 
and sombre black, and their place will be taken 
by a calm, religious satisfaction. Now all our 
mortuary expressions befit infidelity at heart, a 
society encrusted with materialism, and a grief 
that would be natural only to eternal separation. 



238 MIND IS MATTER. 

Yes, our grief is sacred, but it is mistaken. In 
the evolution of spirituality and enlightment 
all this will change ; and from our anguish of 
the sick room, the aching ankles and brain- 
wrung vigils, our hearts will bound into joy 
with the spirit just liberated, but still with us. 

And, moreover, this philosophy will make us 
more brave through life because fearless of death. 
But after all said and done, this is nothing more 
than old-fashioned Christian conditions that we 
are* arriving at through auxilliaries of Science 
and Philosophy. Thorough psychic culture, or 
spiritualism, is the only philosophy that will 
settle in oar minds the relative value of this 
world with the next, the minimum comparison 
of time with eternity. The spiritual mind has 
an equal appreciation of earth and heaven, 
neither ascetically mortifying the flesh, nor 
wholly giving up to it as a materialist ; but 
views the whole scope of life and existence, the 
here, and the hereafter, with a just balance and 
content, a courage and a hope, befitting a child 
of God, bom never to die. We could never by 
our mental composition be brought to believe 
in death had we not witnessed the simple phy- 
sical fact 

"You know as well as T, that death is life, just as 
our daily or, momentarily dying body is none the 
the less alive and ever recruiting new forces of ex- 



GOD WITH US. 239 

istence. Without death, which is our crape-like, 
church-yardy word for change, for growth, there could 
be no prolongation of that which we call life. " — Robert 
Browning. {Sharpens Life. v ) 

The materialist, because* he cannot see eter- 
nity, says there is none for us. It so happens 
that in this life he cannot see one instant in ad- 
vance of his present moment. To the whole 
race our future is an absolute blank ; we live 
only in the present and the past. We reason 
that we may live to be old, because we see old 
people. That assures nobody an instant of the 
future. We may pass to eternity as easily and 
with no more consciousness of change than the 
healthy child who says : — " Last night I laid 
my head down on the pillow and woke — right — 
up — again — and — it — was — morning. " 

" Behold I show you a mystery ; we shall not all 
sleep, but we shall all be changed in a twinkling, when 
the last trumpet shall sound." 

What imagination can compass the ultimate 
refinement or rarification of the human body. 
A million years of our present rate of progress 
in domestic and economic science, in hygiene, 
dietetics, in labor, germ destroying and pain- 
saving, will produce a mental scope, an elasticity 
of spirits, a clarified mind and perfect bodily 
health and refinement beyond our present con- 
ception of any angel. Consider a million of 




24:0 MIND IS MATTER. 

years abstention from meat-eating and slaugh- 
tering of the innocents, with an elimination of all 
rum and wine drinking, tobacco, gluttony and 
intemperance ; with universal virtue and en- 
lightenment, stirpiculture, the destruction of all 
bacterial influences in air and food, recourse to 
only grains and fruits for nutritition and only 
refined distillations for drinks, and all the legis- 
lative evolution to civil peace and order. Pos- 
sibly then the oxygen and sun's rays, which 
even now are our only source of tissue, and 
which reach us through animal and vegetable 
food, will assimilate with the human form 
directly from the air in the lungs, and through 
the skin by sun baths. " Living on the air," and 
sun rays is quite within the hopes of present 
science. Thus, possibly, at that millenial time, 
the body will become so refined, that its meta- 
morphosis into a spiritual body may be as 
natural and instant as that now water is trans- 
muted into gas by electric sparks, or, in a slower 
method, by evaporation. The decay and resur- 
rection of the present gross body is the same 
change, the same mystery chemically, but by 
slower process. 

All of the foregoing philosophy is in the Holy 
Writ. Science matches with it. The men who 
penned the Scriptures had great, unspoiled 
hearts and brains, while nature itself was 



GOD WITH US. 241 

roomy and rich. For moral reasoning, long 
sight and fine intuitions, they were giants 
compared with us, encrusted as we are with 
modern materialism, and upon mere human 
standards we should revere their views. They 
taught, as science does now, that virtue, love, 
holiness, hope, are the hygiene of the soul ; 
and that vice, guilt, despair, are disease and 
death of the soul. 

" For to be carnally minded is death ; but to be 
spiritually minded is life and peace." 

Scientifically speaking, as well as religiously, 
immortality is partly a question of morals ? 
The "survival of the fittest" has its moral 
corollary in the extinction of the unfit. The 
economies of Nature have no place for the de- 
humanized beings — mere ashen survivors of 
moral death. Court records show that multi- 
tudes and multitudes of human forms contain 
no more guiding principle, nor moral restraint, 
than the animals of an African jungle. All 
their acts and dispositions tally in all similari- 
ties of ferocity, filth, remorselessness, despera- 
tion, and soullessness. They have neither affin- 
ity with, nor object in a future state, more than 
brutes. Of what use can they be in eternity ? 
An ego once set up in intellectual continuity, 
its final continuity depends partly upon spiritual 



242 MIND IS MATTER. 

health, desire, and ambition. This agrees with 
revelation. The vicious may die of exhaustion, 
spiritual atrophy or inanition. " The sting of 
death is sin." The righteous may have eternal 
life. 

' ' In his sermon Mr. Beecber emphasized his belief 
more than ever before in the doctrine that immortality 
is for the righteous only, and that the wicked dead are 
annihilated" — Brooklyn Union, Autumn of 1885. 

There is no particular date or instant for one 
general resurrection; there will be no "last 
• trump." Each individual is resurrected instant- 
ly at bodily dissolution, changed immediately 
into spiritual life. The grave affords to the 
soul no abiding place, for not all are buried ; 
the soul has its own body, hatched within the 
physiology. Possibly the soul may sleep some- 
where, as in coma or mortal sleep, but it contains, 
like a vegetable seed, its own dynamic reflex 
force to awaken it in its due and natural time. 
Too long a sleep might destroy its momentum 
of hope and desire. As the cohesion of bodily 
atoms is lost and the body ego is thereby dis- 
persed, so the cohesive sentience of ' the soul 
atoms being lost, the soul atoms disperse and 
destroy soul-ego. The question comes up that 
if the atoms are in themselves sentient, how 
many of them does it require to separate from 
the main body of the soul to change the identity 
or destroy the ego. We need not attempt to 



GOD WITH US. * 243 

fathom the mystery of the location of the ego 
nor its material measurement, but we can fall 
back upon its analogy to the physical body. 
The body may waste its particles away to dis- 
solution. So may the soul lose its particles 
until weakened beyond the power of sentience. 
A sentient ego is only a question of degree, as a 
current of electricity, the force depending upon 
the battery, or gathering cause. It takes a 
congeries of soul atoms to make a conciousness, 
the same as it does a gathering of particles to 
make an animal organism ; and we cannot tell 
where the dividing line is between the living 
ego and the non-living ego. The cement of 
the soul atoms is moral health, desire, hope, 
love. Wanting those qualities there cannot be 
any cohesive power of soul atoms. No one has 
ever- placed the point of life and sentience in 
the human foetus ; nor even demonstrated a 
soul immediately after birth. Can there be any 
soul until there is memory or instinct ? While 
soul atoms, being ultimate, pure and undegrad- 
able, may in themselses have an inchoate sen- 
tience, their dispersion may destroy that cen- 
tralized potency that constitutes ego conscious- 
ness. The analogy of bodily life is continued 
beyond bodily dissolution. Spiritual corporeity 
doubtless resembles physical corporeity. There 
may be in the ethereal realms infant souls, 



244 MIND IS MATTER. 

sick souls, waning souls, strong souls, perishing 
souls. The health of the soul is righteousness. 
Without a corporeal principle in spirituality, 
individuality would be destroyed in the future 
world. 

— "But the righteous into life eternal. "—Matt. 
xxv„ 46. 

"In the way of righteousness is life ; and in the 
pathway thereof is no death." — Pro v. xii. 28. 

The soul is kept alive and the ego continued 
and projected beyond the grave by a reviving 
hope, " an unfaltering trust," that is engendered 
in good morals and virture. Happiness is the 
object of life here and it is the only object 
hereafter. 

When we give our minds earnestly to a study 
of the mere transitoriness of mortal life and 
affairs, and yet feel how continuous our hopes 
and loves are, we then realize the utter incom- 
patibility of soul with earth. We see that the 
most substantial human successes and posses- 
sions fade, literally and exactly, like the scenes 
of a camera. All personal grandeur, strength, 
popularity, business, or political success, official 
station and power, property, family, long sunny 
plateaus and even empires— pass away like the 
clouds. None of them are abiding here, simply 
because the physiology is not abiding. If the 
body were everlasting, then the earth and time 



GOD WITH US. 245 

were eternity ; then human aspiration would fit 
physical life. It requires an eternity to match 
human loves. Our ambitions are more than 
commensurate with earth and time. Is there 
an answer to that demand of every heart for 
permanence ? We talk, act, and build for per- 
manence, with scarcely any idea of death ; but 
we are upon quicksand here. Is there one place 
that is safe and sure ? As seeds in the ground 
have innate qualities drawing them upwards into 
the air and sunshine, so we have innate qualities 
drawing us to ethereal realms. This is science. 
One who can contemplate a flower, a new-born 
babe, or the devotions in a sick room, and say 
thereisno God nor heaven, has simply no brains; 
this is morals. When we assume with scientific 
certainity thatmind is linked to a durable vehicle, 
to a spiritual body, which is ultimate matter, 
and that it has the boundless ether as its realm 
of life and enjoyment, then we are ready for de- 
livery from our earth-worm condition up into 
the sunshine, the joy, the content of eternity. 
Suns and planets perish, but in their final crash 
they cannot harm a soul, because that is astral 
fluid, which penetrates and passes through 
physical matter as magnetism does. 

" But some men will say, how are the dead raised up? 
and with what body do they come ? Thou fool, that 
which thou sowest is not quickened except it die: Thou 
sowest not that body that shall be. But God giveth it 



246 MIND IS MATTER. 

a body as it has pleased him, and to every seed its own 
body. There are celestial bodies and bodies terrestrial, 
but the glory of the celestial body is one and the glory 
of the terrestial body is another. It is sown a natural 
body, it is raised a spiritual body. As we have borne 
the image of the earthly, we shall also bear the image 
of the heavenly. Flesh and blood cannot inherit the 
kingdom of God." 

Is there within us now that which points to 
eternal life ? Yes, if we hope for it and conform 
to Nature's law. If God is the atomic energy 
all about us, it is science conforming to the 
Bible-teaching of His omnipresence. Taking 
this view, the agnostic may believe in His sur- 
rounding and sustaining power as a corrective 
and a guide ; he will know and feel the All- see- 
ing eye. The quintessence of religion is in 
"Thou God seest me." He is not supernatural, 
nor at a distance. We love, trust or fear a pre- 
sence more than an absence. As the oxygen . 
and electricity about us sustain the body does 
the environing permeating atomic substance of 
the Holy Spirit sustain, refresh, and restore the 
soul. Does not this kind of materialistic view 
tend to erect the moral nature of man, guide his 
steps, and bring him out right ? 

"Thou compasseth my path. Thou hast beset me 
behind and before and laid thy hand upon me. Whither 
shall I go from Thy Spirit or whither shall I flee from 
Thy presence ? " 



INDEX. 

A. 

Atomicity in mental action, 52. 
Atomic persistency, 54. 
Animals — their power of direction, 6. 
Atoms — sexed, 60. 

the first steps in creation, 74. 

probable sentient, 79, 173. 

inmortality, 63. 
Atomicity of the Holy Ghost, 104 

B. 

Brain molecules not the ultimate organ of thought, 45 

Benefits of these theories, 87, 207. 

Body a dynamo, 89. 

Beginning — at the, 111. 

Blood circulation and magnetism, 165. 

" " " oxygen, 165. 

Body — spiritual, 186. 
Brain — magnetic susceptibility, 204. 
Body — physical not a fixed quantity, 221. 

C. 

Cosmic mist, 48. 

Command — power of, 2, 7, 11. 

military, 18. 
Creative process yet existing, 100. 
Coincidence of thought, 186. 



248 INDEX. 

Civil influence, 19, 21. 
Chemistry incomplete, 75. 

" of the soul, 
Character is dynamic action, 82. 

D. 

Death — dread of, removed, 221. 

E. 

Ethereal world matches human aspirations, 231. 
Ether — invulnerable, 223. 

is material, 224. 
Ego persistency in matter, 54, 221, 223. 

" localized, 64. 
Ethereal forms, 69. 
Electrical body, 56. 
Electricity and life, 57, 101. 

is God, 100. 

related to anlagy, 101. 
Electricity and chemistry, 168. 

substance of, 169, 174. 
" and immortality, 

Energy is sentience, 

" is God, 76, 172. 
Expression not mind, 85. 
Electricity and soul, 94. 

is nerve fluid, 99. 
Evolution of God, 104. 
Electricity of body and silk garments, 175. 
Ego — soul and bodily analogous, 243. 

P. 

Free agency, 68. 
Funeral barbarisms, 234. 



INDEX. 249 



Germs are ideas of God, 81. 

Gravitation and magnetism convertible, 81. 

G. 

Grace of God is material affinity, 226. 

God — bodily presence, 

God with us. a scientific fact, 227. 

H. 

Hypnotism, 19, 119. 

fluidic tlieory, 120. 

suggestive theory, 121. 
Holy Ghost, material and dynamic, 191. 
Hope and volition the key of immortality, 211. 
Heaven — material in ethereal forms, 231. 
Home — love and religion in, 224. 
Hope — a vital energy, 244. 

I. 

Idealism, 31, 46, 98. 

Intuition is contact, 6. 

Immortality predicable in physiology, 69. 

" in the atom, 76. 

" comes of volition, 76. 

" and hope, 211. 

Insomnia molified, 184. 
Inspired writers — the, 241. 

L. 

Life universal, 70. 

" of organisms not an arbitral gift, 79, 83. 

" reaches back to God, 80. 

" before organization, 83. 

" only from pre-existing life, 109. 
Language — insufficient for spirit, 195. 
Love is material affinity, 233. 
Life a failure, 221, 233. 



250 INDEX. 

M. 

Matter always present with mind, 51. 
" thinking, 51. 
" not delusions, 65. 
Mind and matter connate, 39, 68. 
Matter cannot be surplusage, 46. 

is mind stuff, 103. 
Mind — dynamics of, 1. 
" emanation, 6. 
" synonymous with soul, 29. 
44 a material force, 27. 
44 localized, 34. 
' " cannot evolve itself, 70. 
Magnetism, 5, 6. 
Microscope and atomic life, 77. 
Molecules are organisms or microbes, 78. 
Magnetic fluid, the mind's agent, 89. 
44 " human, 90. 

•* " in society, 

" 44 is material, 100. 

44 is life, 142. 
44 4 * sympathy of society, 159, etc. 

14 social phenomena, 164. 
44 and oxygen, 165. 
Materialization of soul, 187. 
Mesmerism — quotations on, 194. 
Materialism — cure of, 221. 

N. 
Nerve fluid, 5, 6. 

44 * 4 is electricity, 99. 

O. 

Organization without pre-existing organization, 109. 
Outings — mental health of, 158. 
Original impulses — spirit aid in, 225, 



INDEX. 251 



P. 



Physicists against psychic speculation, 40. 

Primordial element, 49, 73. 

Positive and passive people, 8, 14, 22, etc. 

Personal sway, 9, 10, 13. 

Phenomena of, 14. 

" >• psychism, 143. 

Personal devil, 157. 
Psycho—matter, 177, 179. 

,, evolution, 240. 
Physical existence changeable, 178. 
Prayer, a natural science, 227. 

R. 

Resurrection and persistency of matter, 221, 232. 
inherent in the individual, 241. 
" and morality, 237. 

S. 
Sentience in energy, 37. 

" and matter connate, 68. 
" and vitality, 70. 
SouMhe body of the mind, 39. 

" materialization of, 187. 

" a material force, 43. 

" discretion of, 77. 

" substance of, 2, 25. 

" electric, 94. 

" specific gravity of, 10. 

" defined, 30, 95. 

" an electric body, 30 

" accretion, 158. 
Sex in atoms, 60. 

" begun by mental impress, 105. 

" in inorganic matter, 61. 



252 INDEX. 

Substance — all is material, 73, 74, 189. 

Spirit forms, 103. 

Spermatozoids not organizations, 105. 

Spontaneous generation, 112, 114. 

Sympathy is contact 155, 160. 

Spirit influences, 156. 

Silk, preserver of electricity, 175. 

Spiritualism, 177. 

a question of culture, 181, 185, 238, 239. 
Spirit forces — continuity of, 179. 

" " visibility argued, 180. 

Spirits revisiting earth, 181, 221. 
Still small voice, 183. 
Spirit essence, 229. 
Social cement, 186, 197. 
Specific gravity in bodies — difference, 188. 
Soul — chemistry, 190. 

" Electric speed of, 225. 

" tangible and concrete, 209. 

" hygeine, 241. 
Spiritual body, 242. 

U. 

Universe — all related, 44. 

V. 

Volition and inperishability of matter united, 56. 
Energy is God volition, 40. 
Vibrations in physics, 4. 
Vice — dynamics of, 159. 

W. 

Woman — her necessity for religion, 227. 



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